Review of Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult

Introduction

Lt. Frank Drebin is back in the third (and last, to date) Naked Gun movie subtitled “The Final Insult”. Frank (Leslie Nielsen) has now retired from Police Squad to take care of the domestic chores whilst his wife, Jane (Priscilla Presley), follows a successful career of her own. All is not going well with his marriage since his retirement so when he’s asked to go under cover by his old Captain, Ed Hocken (George Kennedy), and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) he simply can’t resist the chance of being able to shoot someone again.

Again it’s formulaic spoof movie stuff but this is no bad thing, especially seeing as I love this sort of movie. From the standard police car intro scene to the comic alterations in the credits at the end it’s all here exactly as we’ve come to expect.

Video

The 1.78:1 ratio anamorphic transfer is well done. Even though it looks ever so slightly softer in appearance than the transfer on it’s predecessor, and has a few signs of film artefacts, the picture quality is still very good quality.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is put to good use. Like the picture quality it doesn’t seem quite up to the high standard set by the second Naked Gun movie with the dialogue being less well defined in places. That said it still sets a high standard with some good use of the surround channels when needed and some nice separation across the front of the soundstage.

Features

As with the previous movie it follows suit with the extras consisting of trailers and a feature length audio commentary. This time the commentary is provided by David Zucker (producer), Robert Weiss (Producer), Peter Segal (Director) and Michael Ewing (Associate Director). Again it’s informative and an interesting listen but their attempts at humour are very poor and you really wish they had simply played it straight. Deleted scenes would have been a great addition on this disc as there are numerous scenes that were left out.

Conclusion

As I mentioned in my review of the previous Naked Gun movie you either love or hate this type of film and I happen to absolutely love it. Even an ardent fan such as myself will admit to this one being the least funny of the 3 movies though. That’s not to say there aren’t still allot of laughs to be had here, far from it, it’s just that there aren’t quite as many as in the previous 2 movies. It would seem that stopping after this one was a shrewd move, far better to end on what is still a highly entertaining movie than to let things go stale.

The returning cast members are as excellent in their roles as you have come to expect, from the straight faced Nielsen to the prim and proper Presley they all hit the mark. The villain of the piece is Rocco Dillon (Fred Ward) and is just cheesy enough to pull of the staple bad guy role as per usual. Rocco’s girl is Tanya Peters, played by Anna Nicole Smith. She is pretty dreadful it must be said and you can see the 2 large reasons why she got the part as they overshadow any movie talent she might have quite easily.

There are numerous funny moments that will have you laughing out loud, the Carlson Clinic scene where Frank talks about playing with his Uncle in the backyard being a particular favourite of mine. Although there are far less background gags than in the previous 2 movies there’s still enough going on in the foreground to keep you more than amused.

So we have a good quality disc, slightly below the standards set by the second Naked Gun disc, and another very funny movie. Recommended.