I can’t even tell the story straight without bursting out laughing, because every single scene is just madness layered on madness. It’s like watching a serious detective story—except it’s been hijacked by clowns who refuse to admit they’re clowns.
So there’s this cop, Frank Drebin—played by Leslie Nielsen with that deadly serious face that makes everything ten times funnier. He’s supposed to be the no-nonsense, tough-as-nails detective, but honestly? The man is chaos in a trench coat. Like, imagine a guy who thinks he’s always on top of things, but somehow he’s constantly destroying everything he touches, and still everyone lets him be in charge.
One of the early scenes that still cracks me up is when he comes back from vacation and barges straight into a press conference. Everyone’s there being all professional, and Frank just walks in sweaty, shouting about his buddy getting hurt. He doesn’t even know what’s going on but acts like he does. And somehow people take him seriously. That’s Frank. That’s the vibe.
And then there is this entire conspiracy story about how somebody is going to kill the Queen of England when she comes to L.A. And you would think-- “Oh, big stuff. But in Frank’s world? It implies mad pursuits, fumbled stakeouts, and clumsy lovemaking with the femme fatale, Jane. The two come together in one of those old cliches of we shouldn’t like each other but we completely do. Their relationships are preposterous, one moment they are all flirtatious, the next moment they are engaged in the most hilarious montage of doing the most haphazard couple activities such as running at the beach, slow-motion hotdog eating or whatever. You nearly forget that this is a crime film.
Indeed, the comedy drives on in the baseball stadium scene towards the end. That is the major climax, where the assassination is to occur. Frank masquerades as the umpire-- and oh my God, this bit kills me. He’s striking and walking out in such a melodramatic way that the whole crowd believes he is the greatest umpire in the history of baseball. He is spinning, screaming, dancing, the crowd is loving it- meanwhile, he is literally scanning the players and trying to figure out who the assassin is. As if, what happened? How did we end up with a detective story and Frank literally performing a one man show to a crowd of people in a stadium?
And then, when he then finds out who the brainwashed killer is, it’s this mad scramble in which everything simply falls apart. Others are dropping over, all is in confusion, and Frank, by mere dumb luck, has got to be the savior of the day. The Queen lives, everyone applauds and Frank somehow becomes treated like a hero who isn’t stupid, despite the fact that 90% of what is going on is him clamoring about and dropping things as well as making more destruction than the villains themselves.
What really gets me about Naked Gun is how straight everyone plays it. Like, Frank never once admits he’s ridiculous. He’s dead serious about every single line, even when he’s saying the most absurd things. There’s this line delivery style Leslie Nielsen had where he could say, “Nice beaver!” when Jane hands him a stuffed animal, and he makes it sound like standard detective banter. That’s why it works—you’re laughing not at the joke itself, but at the fact that he’s treating nonsense like gospel truth.
And honestly, I think that’s why the movie stays with me. It’s not just slapstick; it’s that weird tension between “serious cop thriller” and “absolute lunacy.” You feel like you’re watching two movies at once, and somehow both are real. And for me, there’s something kind of comforting in that chaos—like life itself is already absurd, and maybe the best way to handle it is just to charge in with confidence like Frank Drebin. You’ll mess up, you’ll look ridiculous, but sometimes you’ll still save the day, and maybe even get the girl.
I walked away from it grinning, but also thinking about how much of life is like that—how many times I’ve tried to be “serious” and ended up fumbling my way through, only to look back and laugh. That’s what Naked Gun feels like: a reminder not to take yourself too seriously, because even if you do, the world probably won’t.
Ohhh, Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear — now that’s the one where they crank Frank Drebin’s chaos level to absolute maximum, and honestly, watching it feels like you’re strapped into a rollercoaster of slapstick and deadpan stupidity that somehow keeps topping itself. Let me gist it for you the way I’d tell a friend, scene by scene, because that’s really the only way to capture how ridiculous it is.
It starts like that again with Frank being the most blind detective of the world. It has this entire arrangement with Dr. Meinheimer, this scientist who has got a scheme to advance renewable energy, the solar, wind, that sort of thing. But of course, big oil and energy and energy moguls are not having it, so they plan to put him in a body bag. You see already that Frank is the wrong guy to be dealing with something so delicate, but the fact that he charges into situations with so much confidence is just killing me.
This is because there is this dinner scene in which Frank is supposed to be suave and a spy and instead he destroys the whole table set-up. Similarly, he is attempting to be cunning with the bread rolls and proceeds to launch food through the room. And the kicker? There is no one in that world who would ever respond in the normal way. The fact that they handle him as though he is competent only increases its comedy.
And thereupon the romance confusions with Jane enter the scene. Frank still desperately loves her, and now she is involved with Quentin Hapsburg, who is mostly a tuxedo-clad smarmy villain. All the scenes with Jane are Frank struggling to reconnect with Jane whilst he bumbles at work. Here is the part where he appears at her door, and it is supposed to be romantic, but he crashes into the furniture and upsets the lamps like his love language is oafish. You almost cringe but laugh because in some way his sincerity is showing beneath the stupidity.
The wheelchair chase must be considered one of my top choices of ridiculous sequences. They have Meinheimer in a wheelchair and somehow it becomes this high-speed pursuit involving wheelchairs hurling down the street like dragsters. I recall being so much in stitches I could not breathe as it is so ridiculous, except that it is filmed like a real action movie with dramatic music, jump cuts, close-ups but with wheelchairs.
And their approach to the political aspect is dumb and yet clever. The villains are out to destroy renewable energy and in the mess, Frank accidentally reveals their whole plot. The banquet climax is pure Naked Gun, having Frank attempt to intervene in the assassination attempt, him fumbling through a minefield of disasters: fireworks exploding in the background, people falling and sliding around, and Frank somehow saving the day without quite knowing what he is doing.
That final confrontation with Quentin is invaluable. Frank succeeds in frustrating him in the most absurd manner possible, which includes a fight wherein everything goes amiss - blows falling on the wrong person, Frank knocking over tables and one time I swear he wins by mere chance. However, the film ends with him once again in the embrace of Jane with a heroic appearance despite the fact that we all know it was anarchy and accident.
What really got me, though, was how — in the middle of all this madness — the romance with Jane sneaks back in. After the fight, Frank’s bruised, battered, covered in food, but Jane looks at him like he’s this brave, clumsy knight who always manages to come through. It’s so absurd, but you weirdly buy it because the movie’s been training you to accept that Frank’s disasters are what make him heroic. The final kiss feels earned, not because Frank was competent, but because he wasn’t — and yet, somehow, it worked.
