The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear; parody, USA, 1991; D: David Zucker, S: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O. J. Simpson, Robert Goulet

Clumsy Lieutenant Frank Drebin manages to turn a dinner with US president George Bush into a disaster. But new villains are again threatening peace and safety: the rich Hapsburg replaces Dr. Meinheimer, an expert for clean energy bound to a wheelchair, with an identical spy in order to continue with the production of hazardous atomic energy. But Frank and his girlfriend Jane will stop him.

The sequel to the popular comedy "Naked Gun" is, with its 'rough' jokes and overstretched story, arguably the worst part of that trilogy dedicated to hilarity. Leslie Nielsen as the main hero, clumsy Lieutenant Frank Drebin, is once again in top notch shape, but since the film is one-dimensional it depends only on the largest possible amount of jokes, yet in this 2nd film less of them are successful. Sometimes they are even only reduced to banal identification of the movies which are spoofed (for instance, Dr. Meinheimer is flying pass the silhouette of the Moon like in "E.T.") and just call for the expectation of a 3rd, better film, though, despite the heavy handed execution, David Zucker's direction still has enough virtues to carry the film

Grade:++