To argue that 1988’s the Naked Gun was a landmark in the history of satire would be a slight exaggeration. For one thing, no it wasn’t. For another, it wasn’t even that influential in the career of its writing/directing team of Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, who first built their formula eight years before in Airplane!, a hilarious and groundbreaking spoof which I would surely be reviewing here if I’d ever seen it, only I haven’t. But you should watch the Naked Gun anyway. I recommend it not only for the unexpected acting chops of O.J. Simpson, who convincingly plays a non-abusive, non-homicial policeman un-driven by fear of the news media, but because Abrahams and Zucker showed by far the keenest pre-Simpsons understanding of two of comedy’s most basic should-be rules.

Rule #1: Write a pseudo-noir mystery about cops who try to prevent the assassination, by a respected yet slimy business leader, of the Queen of England. Wait, no, that’s not it; I was obeying the rule of reviewing by which I should tell you what the movie’s about. Namely, that. Also there’s a minor sub-plot about heroin dealers. And there’s a romantic side plot involving the renegade cop (Frank Drebbin, played by Leslie Nielsen) and the slimeball’s luscious girl-toy (Jane Spencer, played by Priscilla Presley) – but you knew that when I said “pseudo-noir”.

Rule #1, then: Never let the actors or characters suggest that anything is supposed to be funny. Younger readers among you may be used to how the Simpsons and the Family Guy have no laugh-track … but you’ll still recognize them as exceptions in the sitcom world. And laugh-tracks are only a symbol of a poisonous belief that’s run deep in the comedy culture since long before Bozo the Clown: that we’re happy to laugh out of good-will, charity, and a dim incomprehension. If a joke bombs, and the comedian looks sad about it and says something cute, it’s supposed to be almost as good as something funny.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that good-will, charity, and dim incomprehension are central to who I am. But they are not funny, and they sure as heck ain’t satiric. The radical thing about the Naked Gun is that most of the actors – Nielsen particularly – try to utter their ridiculous lines and waltz through their silly routines with grim-faced devotion to their role.

This has several benefits. For one, when the line or routine is funny, the delivery lets it sneak up on us, the viewers: we laugh on a surprised little delay, and we do it without being taken out of the scene. Evil Vincent Ludwig (played by Ricardo Montalban, perhaps the only real actor in the whole cast) opens a cigar box for Drebbin: “Cuban?”, he offers. “No, Scotch-Irish”, Drebbin replies as he brushes past and sits down; “and my mother was from Wales”, he adds, respectfully precise. Ludwig frowns briefly and moves on to business. Or there’s the sad new wisdom in Drebbin’s voice as he bites off the lines “She’s like a spoonful of Drano. Oh sure, she’ll clean you out real good, but she leaves you all hollow and empty inside”.

For another, some jokes would be pretty much impossible with standard comic “Hi, look, I have a funny voice and goofy gestures!” acting. A throwaway bit of background early in the movie has a generic cop shooing along some extras: “Move along, move along, nothing to see here”. Later, a chase scene will result in an embarrassed Drebbin standing in front of a suddenly-wrecked factory as thousands of fireworks explode behind him. His “move along, move along, nothing to see here” is almost identical to the first – and is funnier, to my mind, than the chase scene.

Straight-facedness also allows whimsy that doesn’t rise to the level of joke. O.J. Simpson plays a cop named “Norberg”: called attention to, it would seem vaguely racist, or anti-Semitic, or something meaningful and bad. Instead everyone calls him “Norberg” in the same inflection they’d use to call him “Simpson”, except “Norberg” is random and inspired.

Perhaps most importantly, though: if no one in the movie acts like anything funny is happening, that makes it much easier for us to swallow if nothing funny _is_ happening. The Naked Gun’s jokes can be too obvious or too dumb. I did not, for example, laugh when Jane Spencer (in skimpy skirt) climbs a ladder before Drebbin and he looks up and says “Nice beaver”. (She pulls the animal down: “Thanks, I just had it stuffed”.) But it was a passing moment in a more important conversation. If Drebbin had sounded really lewd or done a double-take, or Spencer had winked, that would have been the flashing neon arrow pointing to the dumbness. As is, well, I waited to see what would happen next, just like in a drama.

Silent visual humor, by the way, can be perfect for these understated scenes. Example: Weird Al Yankovic, who cameos in one of the Naked Gun’s weaker scenes, is not a subtle man. Even without the bulging eyes, sleazy mustache, Hawaiian shirts and bulging plastic muscles or fat sacs, there’s his look-at-me refusal to use his real name (Weird Percival Sumner Yankovic IV). The actors in his 1989 movie UHF – a cute and well-written movie, sure – kept stomping all over its best ideas by screeching, aw-shucksing, flailing, and gibbering like loons. The writing also tended to take a step too far: the deep-voiced, echoing announcer in the ads for “Spatula City(-ty -ty –ty!)!! We sell spatulas!” was forced to advertise their Going out of Business sale, rather than letting us viewers live, briefly, in a happy world where Spatula City could prosper. UHF’s one deathlessly brilliant scene, then, is its Raiders of the Lost Ark-style opening, where explorer Al and his short but wily ethnic-native helper, clambering across a barren desert, find the cave where the treasure is known to be hidden.

They do not speak as they pick their way forward and see threatening signs: STOP. DO NOT ENTER. WRONG WAY. As the signs keep coming (Beware of Falling Rocks, Slippery When Wet, No Right Turn on Red, Ped Xing…), the native tugs at Al’s arm, alarmed; Al scowls. The native tries again to deter Al from their deadly task; Al shakes him off, macho and forthright. Finally the native scurries off and, two steps out of the cave, is run over by a train.

I don’t love any of the visuals in Naked Gun _quite_ that much, but its opening credit sequence is close. Real close. There’s a good montage or two as well.

**********
Rule #2: a joke that isn’t funny can often be made funny if you know exactly how long to extend it. This is not a contradiction of Rule #1, though it’s often mistaken for one by sloppy writers. An extended gag should be just as deadpan as a normal one.

I am embarrassed, but willing, to admit that my longest laugh while seeing the Naked Gun was for its single most juvenile joke – one that, worse yet, I saw coming far in advance. Drebbin is seated at a press conference about the police preparation for Queen Elizabeth’s arrival, and he is asked to speak briefly. His microphone doesn’t work, so he borrows one from the next guest.

I knew he would not return the microphone. I knew he would not take it off. I knew he would head immediately to the bathroom after speaking. I didn’t remember this from seeing the movie fifteen years ago; it was just obvious. As he went to the restroom and started peeing (somewhat louder than the speech of the main speaker, on whom the movie camera focused), I cringed. But I started laughing somewhere in the sequence as he just kept peeing … and kept peeing … and kept peeing … and we could hear him improvise a little interpretive dance around the adjusting of his fly … and then, along with an appropriate bodily noise or two, were a couple of bodily-ish noises that did not fit any standard mental image at all. And he kept peeing, and we – crucially – kept watching the press conference, where the organizers attempted to proceed as if unaware. Then, before my dignity woke up, the scene switched to something else.

**********
I should not imply that the Naked Gun is flawless. Extending a joke too long doesn’t _always_ make it funny. When Ludwig shows Drebbin around his expensive apartment, brags of his fondness for the good life, takes special pride in his $20,000 fish, and sees Drebbin toying with his “indestructible” fancy pen “vulnerable only to water” … well, there’s two scenes (one immediate) that you can foresee down to the exact detail. Fish and pens aren’t nearly as funny as gross noises.

Also, sometimes Abrahams and Zucker forget to use the formula they perfected. Most notably, the first scene of the movie is awful, and while it would have been awful no matter how they handled it, Nielsen’s bug-eyed grin and the bad toupees make it that much worse. Luckily the scene is a red herring – less useful to enjoying the movie than my watching Casablanca the day before turned out to be.

That said, I think it’s very possible that Airplane! and the Naked Gun _were_important movies. Only after them did the Simpsons debut a run as (to my mind) the most sustainedly funny program ever – without a single character other than Bart or Nelson who shows any evidence of a sense of humor. Only after them did the Family Guy come along and have Peter Griffin, in the middle of speaking up for a friend (“One, Joe’s a nice guy. Two…”), get attacked by a giant chicken, fist-fight the chicken all the way down the street, fist-fight the chicken through the roads and into the river and into the mountains and into the sky, fist-fight the chicken into the air and down through the ceiling of a cruise ship during a conference, fist-fight the chicken across the ship’s furnace and spilling onto the street when the ship runs aground, fist-fight the chicken through the traffic of Quahog and right into the path of a machine that slices the chicken into the bits, and return to his conversation with “Two…” as his neighbors await him.

Detective Norberg, interrupting a Rasputin-by-way-of-Buster-Keaton death scene to bump into a door marked “Wet Paint” and stare at his suit going “oh no!”, would be proud. I admit that if, after being re-animated, he were to catch a few minutes of Two-and-a-Half Men or the King of Queens, his spirits might fall again, and his influence might seem puny. But those things, see, I’m not urging him or you to watch.

Recommended: Yes