Best movie of this year hands down!

The Worst Film Ever

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fresh and Exciting

I found a copy of 1974's "Man on a Swing" and decided to watch it because it had Lane Smith, Gil Gerard and Tanya Roberts in it. It's an altogether serious movie about police detectives investigating murdered teens. This movie opens with a one minute-20 second "one take scene" shot by a camera mounted on the police car roof--behind the flashing light bar. It looks like you see the entire drive from the station to the crime scene. Perhaps some other police movie had a similar opening sequence. But it's clear this movie's opening scene alone would have been sufficient to inspire the comedic version of the same viewpoint that opens "The Naked Gun".

Gut bustingly hilarious when it first came out, but now not quite as much. Leslie Nielsen is undeniably funny as police detective Frank Drebin, the incompetent but deadly serious hero of the film who must stop an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth, though the film's humor is really around the incidental moments occurring around the main story. Some of those moments still hold up and others do not. What was most surprising watching this film now is how leisurely paced it seems compared to contemporary rapid fire comedies. It was also very odd to see O.J. Simpson playing kind mild mannered police detective Nordberg. Overall, this is still a worthy comedy and certainly worth checking out.

The police procedural, now there's a subgenre that can use a good parody; and "The Naked Gun" is more than happy to offer those services. There's no weak link in this cast, and both Nancy Marchand and Ricardo Montalban ably serve as straight men to the rest of the players. The obvious MVP here is Leslie Nielsen and it's no surprise how he's attained legendary status in this field. As a kid, we used to have HBO in the house for a while, and this was played almost on a loop. Age has done nothing to dull this film's charm; the gags come at you one after the next and some aren't easy to pull off. It's all unbelievably silly, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is one of those rare gems that really brightens your day. 8/10

Relatively young viewers won't be in on the opening scene gag when a host of terrorist world leaders get spoofed - Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Muammar Khaddafi, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ayatollah Khameini. There's even a Vladimir Putin look alike who turns out to be a guy named Pahpshmir later on in the story; that was kind of prescient as Putin himself didn't come on the world scene until around 1999/2000. So was that a lucky prophetic guess or what? I just have to shake my head.I like these kinds of films where the sight and sound gags come a mile a minute, they have a way of keeping the viewer on his toes. It's all nonsense of course, like the sign in a warehouse stating 'Attention - All employees must wash hands before using restroom'. You really have to seek that one out, aware that the film makers didn't always draw direct attention to them but did some of their work with a subtlety to be admired.And then there are the gags that come at you like a hammer blow, like Lieutenant Drebin's (Leslie Neilsen) ill fated attempt to infiltrate Vincent Ludwig's (Ricardo Montalban) office, filled with fine art and exotic collections. Then at one point out of nowhere, we get treated to Herman Hermit's hit 'Somethin' Tells Me I'm Into Somethin' Good'. The kicker of course when it comes to hindsight, is the appearance of O.J. Simpson. You would think that with this exposure to police detective tactics, he might have put them to good use one day in seeking out the real killer.