Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) must foil an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II who is on a state visit to Los Angeles. The biggest hitch is that he is the most incompetent officer on the force.

The Naked Gun began life as a TV series named “Police Squad” in 1982 that was cancelled after six episodes. A parody comedy show that took aim at police procedurals and created by the now legendary filmmakers known as ZAZ. David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker were responsible for legendary slapstick movies Airplane! and Top Secret! before The Naked Gun. This output during the 1980’s delivered some of the best slapstick comedy movies ever made. With a legacy sequel starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in cinemas now I thought I should return to the original before checking it out.

Rewatching The Naked Gun was a surreal experience for me that just seemed to jog memory after memory of my father laughing and talking to the TV as he watched it. This and its sequels were films that we seemed to watch with some regularity when I was younger and my dad is one of those people who enjoys trying to warn characters of impending danger as he watches. So many of the scenes in this film held memories of him either in fits of laughter or explaining why the characters were behaving daftly that it seemed to add even more to the humour as I watched it again now. As a result the film almost seems to defy any critical response from me and just one of great nostalgia.

There is little really to dislike though as the film runs at an insanely brisk (for this day and age) eighty-five minutes where Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley and George Kennedy move from one inspired comedy routine to the next. There are sight gags, pratfalls, witty wordplay and plain old rude humour at every turn and the actors’ deadpan delivery make it superbly funny with Leslie Nielsen delivering old fashioned leading man charisma wrapped up with total incompetence.

An inspired comedy.