Of all the remakes and sequels that have flooded cinemas this year, The Naked Gun is proving to be the reboot we didn’t know we needed.
We say ‘reboot’, but really this is a belated sequel, in which Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. (a perfectly cast Liam Neeson) takes on the hapless cop role from his late father, formerly played by the inimitable Leslie Nielsen:
Add in a soupçon of mid-career-resurgence Pamela Anderson as crime novelist and love interest Beth Davenport, and you have yourself a slapstick comedy winner.
It also marks the revival of a kind of spoof or parody movie that has fallen out of fashion in recent years. Such light-hearted films, which send up a particular genre in the broadest of terms, used to be a relatively common sight in multiplexes.
Not all of these movies have been great, of course, and it’s arguable that we hit spoof over-saturation during the ‘90s and ‘00s, leading to the recent drought. But some of the following parody movies are worthy of being considered right up alongside the comedy greats.
Scary Movie
It’s easy to get a little sniffy about Scary Movie and its ilk, but it successfully skewered a pair of ‘90s slasher movie titans in Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It also finds time to reference a host of other horror and mystery movies of the era, from Sixth Sense to Blair Witch Project and The Usual Suspects. The hit rate is, admittedly, somewhat mixed, and there’s very little wit to be found throughout. For older millennials and younger Gen Xers, however, it’s an agreeably daft send-up of a major portion of their formative years.
Hot Shots
In the early ‘90s, one of the key creative forces behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun, Jim Abrahams, turned his parodic attention to the cheesy ‘80s action movie genre, and in particular Top Gun. It doesn’t skewer its target(s) quite so deftly as those two former greats – it simply isn’t as consistently funny – but it’s still packed full of knowing nods and wanton stupidity. It’s led by a commendably stony-faced Charlie Sheen, doing his best Tom ‘Maverick’ Cruise impression. The sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux, smartly moves things on to send up the increasingly jingoistic Rambo series.
Blazing Saddles
What a pivotal year 1974 was for the spoof movie. It saw comedy genius Mel Brooks release not one but two classic send-ups in the form of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. The former is arguably the most momentous for its skewering of Hollywood’s foundational genre, all the while taking on the racist attitudes that were shot through it from the start. Not that this is a remotely dry or cerebral film, you understand. It’s too full of slapstick and fart jokes for that.
The Naked Gun (1988)
Based on a legendary (if under-appreciated in its time) TV show, Police Squad, The Naked Gun introduced us to Lieutenant Frank Drebin – an incompetent US police officer who bungles his way into and out of a series of unlikely scenarios. Key to the film’s (and indeed the franchise’s) success is the performance of Leslie Nielsen, who plays Drebin with the kind of straight face he had utilised in a number of non-comedic roles earlier in his career. It contrasts wonderfully with the deeply daft mayhem unfolding around him.
Spaceballs
If you thought Star Wars was huge today, consider what it was like in the years immediately following Return of the Jedi, when every other cinema release seemed to be a direct rip-off. George Lucas’s magnum opus was ripe for sending up, and Mel Brooks duly obliged with Spaceballs. From its phallic laser swords and hokey mysticism (‘the Schwartz’), to its large-helmeted villain (played by the deeply unimposing Rick Moranis), the film takes every cheap shot it can. The result is a relentlessly entertaining and deeply quotable sci-fi parody.
This Is Spinal Tap
The rock documentary gets its comeuppance in This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s prototypical ‘rockumentary’ that would go on to influence everything from The Office to everyday vernacular (‘turning things up to 11’ can be traced to this film). The movie follows the titular band’s 1982 US tour with all its meat-headed hair-rock bluster and bickering. While the gags are many and varied, it’s the spot-on observation of Brit-rock histrionics that gives This Is Spinal Tap its lasting power.
Shaun of the Dead
We ummed and ahhed over Shaun of the Dead’s inclusion here, purely because of the fact that it’s arguably more of a tribute to the zombie move genre than a spoof. Director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg (who together wrote the script) are clearly in love with all things George A. Romero, packing their suburban horror flick with countless riffs and references to Night of the Living Dead and its follow-ups. It’s just that it happens to do so with a rich seam of quirky, ironic, and decidedly British humour.
Airplane!
Before Leslie Nielsen got the nod to send up the crime drama genre in The Naked Gun, he was putting his straight man energy to good use in Airplane! Here Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers brilliantly send up the overwrought disaster dramas of the ’50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, accompanied by a metronomic stream of visual gags and one-liners. What’s so remarkable about Airplane! – and what so many other spoof films fail to emulate – is the hit rate. You’ll be letting go a chuckle or a full-on guffaw every 30 seconds or so.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
From a certain perspective, Monty Python’s Life of Brian was a cinematic showcase for the sketch-writing skills of one of Britain’s foremost comedy troupes. But this one had a clear theme and a purpose, that being to parody the pompous religious epics of Hollywood’s golden era. Very early in its run time the film ditches the idea of recounting the life of Jesus to follow an ordinary (not to mention very naughty) boy named Brian. His mistaken veneration as The Messiah leads to some of the most timelessly hilarious comedy set pieces ever committed to celluloid.
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