Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult

Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) – The opening scene is inspired and the finale has its moments, but apart from that, this film is mostly unfunny, sometimes cringe-worthy, and not particularly memorable or worthwhile. 5

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear

The Naked Gun 2½ (1991) – It has its moments, but it shamelessly recycles many of the good gags from Police Squad!; even worse, it takes a big step into dumbness, as a lot of the deadpan, subtle humor has been replaced with clowning, mugging, slapstick, and overt buffoonery - movies like this are a dime a dozen. 5

TV: Police Squad!

Police Squad! (1982) – This proto-Naked Gun is wildly uneven, but at its best, it does a great job with its straight-faced sight gags and non sequiturs; it’s not a classic, but it deserved a lot better than six episodes (although even in six episodes, the recycled jokes and story formula were wearing a little thin). 6

The Naked Gun

The Naked Gun (1988) – Yes, it’s frequently dumb, but it’s also so unrelentingly ludicrous and shamelessly absurd that it’s often very funny; Leslie Nielsen is solid as a comedy straight man, and the film is worth seeing if for no other reason than that his performance here, building from his role in Airplane!, utterly shattered his three decades’ worth of reputation (and career) as a dramatic actor. 6