Where to watch Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
3 1/2 Stars
Tasting the fruit of his labor with his wife Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), the maladroit and now retired Police Squad Lieutenant, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), secretly dreams of getting back in action. Before long, his old partners, Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), will have to enlist the help of their loose-cannon friend, when Rocco (Fred Ward), the deranged terrorist, intends on blowing the annual Academy Awards ceremony to smithereens. Once more, Drebin goes undercover, interrogating dangerous blonde bombshells, and putting his precious, but fragile marriage in jeopardy. Are this year’s Oscars doomed to disaster?
Comedy movies don’t get much funnier than The Naked Gun (1988). The follow-up sequel, while still spastically hilarious, was a definite step down, and Naked Gun 33 1/3 still isn’t the stone-cold classic that the original is, but it is an improvement over the previous entry. The screen is filled with visual jokes while the script throws out multiple puns per minute, which makes this second sequel fly by. Peter Segal is in the director’s chair for this go-around, and his style is a perfect match to Jerry Zucker’s, and the changeover is seamless.
The baseball scene at the finale of The Naked Gun has rarely been matched for laughs, and I would put it amongst the best of that era. Naked Gun 33 1/3 final act takes place at the OSCARS, and it’s a marvelously mischievous comedic set piece. The Academy Awards sequence is the highlight of the film and ends it on a high note, sending audiences off with a smile and fond memories of Lt. Frank Drebin and his fellow cohorts at the fictional Police Squad.
Directed by: Peter Segal
Written by: Pat Proft, David Zucker, Robert LoCash
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy