Cinema
A laugh a second
Mark Steyn
Eric Morecambe, currently back on our television screens, once remarked that in America they had funny lines but no funny men. To appreciate the distinction, look no further than the host of the BBC's Eric and Ernie tribute, Ben Elton. A funny man is someone an audience is happy to hang out with even when the funny lines are thin on the ground. Likeability comes into it, but also the ability to disguise the comedian's desperate desire to be liked. In Hollywood comedy today, no-one comes close to Leslie Nielsen, the silver fox of the L.A.P.D. in the Naked Gun movies.
These days, just about every movie comes shadowed by a parody: Top Gun had Hot Shots, Lethal Weapon, which was tongue-in-cheek to begin with, spawned Loaded Weapon. But Hot Shots' Charlie Sheen and whoever the guy in the exe- crable Loaded Weapon was can't compete with Nielsen. Thirty years ago, he was play- ing police roles for real, in forgettable tele- vision series like The New Breed and The Bold Ones; now, without changing his per- formance one iota, he plays them for laughs. Fifty years ago, incidentally, he was an aerial gunner in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and I'd like to think he did even that with the same deadly deadpan earnestness for which he's justly celebrated. It was Air- plane! in 1979 which made him a comedy star with one lethally straight-faced exchange: 'Surely you can't be serious?' I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.' The first Naked Gun gave him one of the great visual jokes of movie comedy: with the hi-fi high and the lights down low, Lt Frank Drebin (Nielsen) and Jane (Priscilla Presley) are on the bearskin rug as the log fire crackles; Jane stands up and, in one clean movement, her gown drops from her shoulders to reveal her lush, full body in all its beauty; Frank then stands up and, in one clean movement, his three-piece suit, shirt and necktie drops to the floor to reveal his lush full body ...
But times change and now Frank's mar- riage is in trouble. To rekindle the old spark, Jane arranges a passionate evening in, selects her sexiest camisole and tunes the radio to the 24-hour Johnny Mathis sta- tion. Unfortunately, Frank has spent the day undercover at a sperm bank, where he hadn't banked on having to make quite so many deposits. Utterly drained, he inches awkwardly through the door, tips the ice bucket onto the sofa, sits on the mound of cubes and waits for his pants to stop smoul- dering. Nielsen imbues Frank, underneath the bluff cop exterior, with a wonderful child-like innocence, all the more remark- able when you consider that in a zillion ter- rible television movies — one thinks of Shadow Over Elveron (1968) — under the bluff cop exterior, Nielsen invariably turned out to be a weakling on the take or a ruthless killer who'd stop at nothing. It's the same with Priscilla Presley: her trem- bling wide-eyed sappy love lines are identi- cal to those she used in Dallas as she ricocheted week by week from Bobby Ewing to Ray Krebs and back. The only difference is that, with this relationship, we care.
The plot is complex — as Frank's narra- tion appreciates: 'Like a midget in a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes.' David Zucker, director/producer/co-writer of the earlier movies, has ceded the direc- tor's chair to Peter Segal for this one, but, if anything, the pace is even more assured. I especially liked the aerial shot of the stars arriving for the Oscar telecast — IA at night, with various city neighbourhoods consumed by flames. Don't like it? Heigh- ho, there'll be another gag in a few nanoseconds.
The mistake most movies make with comedy is in assuming that, if you have lots of jokes, everyone has to be incredibly frantic. In Naked Gun, the jokes are fran- tic, but the cast is relaxed, almost oblivious of them. From the rolling brass of Ira New- born's opening theme music, everything is done for real. Indeed, in the most startling example of the redemptive properties of comedy, Priscilla Presley in an unobtrusive joke at the end of the picture even man- ages to recycle Sally Field's famously gush- ing Oscar acceptance speech and make it work. 'Oh, Frank, you like me. You really like me.' Funny lines, funny film.
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