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Poster (c) Paramount Pictures
Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker made a mistake when making The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Smell of Fear: they made it. They had success with their Airplane! series and the Hot Shots! series, both which had one sequel. However, for some reason, instead of creating another Airplane! sequel (which would have been a riot), they decided to create a Naked Gun sequel. Naked Gun 33 1/3 suffers from sequelitis. While the first sequel, Naked Gun 2 ½, seemed as fresh as the original, this one basically relies on the climactic ending scene (as were in the first two) to make you love it.
Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) is newly retired from Police Squad and six months married to Jane Spencer-Drebin (Priscilla Presley). She wants kids, while he’s trying to figure out what to do now that he is retired. Ed (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) need Frank to do one last job for Police Squad, and he takes it. Jane doesn’t like that and leaves him. Now Frank is undercover to unearth a terrorist operation.
There’s one major thing that separates this movie from the other two Naked Gun movies: it’s not that funny. The first two were almost non-stop laughs, while this one only had one or two really funny scenes. At times it was humorous, but this didn’t feel like the other ones. This one was almost a parody of itself instead of police films. It relied too much on parodies and references, too. There are takeoffs of The Untouchables and Thelma and Louise, and even Alice from The Brady Bunch shows up. This only had one or two moments of TRUE ZAZ humor: when there’s something so wacky and from left-field happens you can’t help but laugh. Also, when someone says something, it’s taken literally. There wasn’t much of that humor here; in fact, the only instance I remember was when Frank was eating the paper (watch the movie to understand). Overall, the only reason you should see Naked Gun 33 1/3 is if you’ve seen the first two and want to complete the trilogy.
Rated PG-13 for off-color humor.
Review Date: October 17, 2003