Director: David Zucker
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, O.J. Simpson, Robert Goulet
Have I Seen It Before?: Yes?
Did I like it?: And the answer to that last question is part of the problem, I think.
I have no memories of sitting down to watch the sequel to The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad! (1988) from beginning to end, but there are elements of it I do remember. I remember the litany of physical abuse delivered upon First Lady Barbara Bush (Margery Ross). I remember Zsa Zsa Gabor having an altercation with the police lights during the opening credits. For the most part, I remember Goulet, who is competent in a thankless role, but has no hope of challenging Ricardo Montalbán for arch movie villainy perfected.
And that would certainly damn the movie with faint praise. The bits in this series are interchangeable so much so that I’m completely uncertain as to whether or not I have ever seen Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). Those gags that did manage to cut through were the muted political material. The jokes at the expense not only of Bush and early 90s Republicans, but still smarting from the rout suffered by Michael Dukakis in 1988. I chuckled at them from the perspective of my own status as a political junky, but even by 91’ it seemed like ancient history. Those jokes age all the worse when one thinks about the deep dive into the other side of the aisle director David Zucker took scarcely ten years later with GOP hackwork and dreck like An American Carol (2008).
And then there’s OJ. Not a single second of his screen time could ever play the way it was intended. It’s odd that ever moment he’s in both of these movies, he’s being injured, as if in some other life he committed some kind of great transgression against humanity.