Movie Review: The Naked Gun: From The Files Of Police Squad! (1988)

A crime comedy, The Naked Gun adopts a scattershot approach to humour and finds frequent hilarious highlights.

After disrupting a meeting of anti-American leaders in Beirut, detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) returns to Los Angeles where his special Police Squad is placed in charge of security for the upcoming visit of Queen Elizabeth II. When his former partner detective Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) is almost killed investigating a drug shipment at the port, Drebin suspects wealthy shipping tycoon Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban) of involvement in an evil plot.

Supported by his supervisor Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy), Drebin initiates an affair with Ludwig's assistant Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) to find out what she knows. But Drebin and Jane fall truly in love, complicating the investigation. Ludwig redoubles his efforts to terminate both Nordberg and Drebin as the Queen's visit draws near.

The 1982 Police Squad! television show lasted a grand total of six episodes, but found a legacy as inspiration for big-screen madness. A combination of satire, slapstick and silliness, The Naked Gun is relentless. The writing team of Jerry and David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Pat Proft grabs every opportunity to throw in yet another joke is an exuberant display of more is better, and mostly it is. While of course a fair share of the intended laughs don't land, enough mayhem is generated to trample over the slow spots.

With David Zucker directing, the epic moments arrive at a fast and furious pace. The pre-credit sequence sets the stage with Drebin gate-crashing a summit of America's most notorious foes of the era. Then his first meeting with Ludwig in the businessman's lavish office instigates an awkward tangle with a rare and expensive fish. Nordberg's shooting and subsequent slow-motion collapse successfully spoofs over-elaborate movie death scenes.

The Queen's gala dinner sets-up the enduring image of Drebin's missionary rescue, and the prolonged climax at a baseball game is a laugh riot, starting with the immortal absconsion of opera singer Enrico Pallazzo and continuing through to the animated umpire exploits.

At the centre of the humour is Leslie Nielsen in imperious form, his deadpan delivery and clueless demeanour a worthy spiritual successor to Inspector Clouseau. Ricardo Montalban is an oily villain, and Priscilla Presley gets in on the fun as the breathy femme not-so-fatale.

As for plot, logic, physics, or common sense, none of it matters. The Naked Gun is fully loaded with madcap frivolity.



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Movie Review: Capricorn One (1977)

A conspiracy thriller about a faked Mars landing, Capricorn One is exceptionally silly and wildly entertaining.

NASA is about to launch the first crewed mission to Mars. But minutes before blast-off, astronauts Brubaker (James Brolin), Willis (Sam Waterston) and Walker (O.J. Simpson) are removed from the spacecraft and hustled to a secret base in the desert, where a warehouse has been converted to a television studio with a Mars-like set. The launch proceeds without the crew, using voice recordings from earlier simulations. 

NASA's Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) pressures the three astronauts into participating in fake studio broadcasts, pretending to be on Mars. He explains the original mission had to be scrubbed and converted to a crew-less flight due to faulty life-sustaining equipment, but admitting failure would have meant loss of funding. Brubaker, Willis and Walker reluctantly go along with the ruse, but Brubaker is uneasy about lying to his wife Kay (Brenda Vaccaro) and their young kids.

Meanwhile journalists Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould) and Judy Drinkwater (Karen Black) are covering the mission. Caulfield receives a tip something is wrong, and starts to investigate.

Combining post-Watergate cynicism about government corruption with wild-ass conspiracy theories about faked moon landings, Capricorn One ambitiously aims for the sweet spot where unfettered collusion thrives. Writer and director Peter Hyams conjures a plot straight from a conspiracy theorists' convention floor, and with B-movie charm but a decent cast and budget, delivers a ridiculously engrossing two hours.

The details subversively reveal the lunacy of conspiracy theories, but may still be too subtle for ardent believers in the cause of nonsense. The Capricorn One conspiracy elements do not attempt to pass rudimentary scrutiny, the script requiring a roomful of the smartest scientists on the planet to not notice they are communicating with recorded messages. Over at the secret warehouse studio, the televised fakery resorts to slow-motion to simulate the lack of gravity. And between the warehouse technicians and the launchpad extraction team, Kelloway is relying on a lot of people to play along.

The group of conspirators becomes larger in the second half, when Brubaker, Willis and Walker make a run for it, split up and are stranded in the desert, hunted down by evil-looking but still cute twin helicopters. Capricorn One re-invents itself as a survival-in-the-desert adventure drama, until Elliot Gould's reporter Caulfield finally connects the dots and intervenes. 

Late in the day and in yet another sly twist, Hyams inserts Telly Savalas as acerbic crop duster Albain. His thorny dialogue exchanges with Caulfield are jagged diamonds, and the climactic chase between the two helicopters and the crop-duster biplane is executed with playful panache.

Capricorn One stays on earth, but is still a rollicking ride.



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