Day Two Hundred and Fifty-seven - The Naked Gun, "Is anyone ELSE here sleeping with this man's wife?"

While it's fairly safe to admit that, when the series wore on, the humor got stale, the villains trite, and the gags less than fresh, the original Naked Gun still brings it home and is definitely the best of the three. There's just something about the way it remains innocent and not too self-aware and winking at the audience... something that it overdid in its sequels.

Nominally set in Los Angeles, the home of the Police Squad series that spawned it, The Naked Gun begins with a cold opener in Beirut where the leaders of the enemies of America are all conveniently in one room. Where Hot Shots played it safe and only went after Saddam, TNG manages to corral Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeni, Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and Gorbachev into a Star-Spangled fantasy sequence of American Kick-Ass Exceptionalism... where Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) pummels them mercilessly for plotting against us.

USA! USA! USA!

It's a farce, but also a sign of the times as Cold War fears were beginning to fade in the era of Glasnost. (It's also hilarious that, when Frank runs out of Dictators to beat on, generic white guy stuntmen in cheap suits begin to show up).

Anyways, past the cold opener we're treated to OJ Simpson getting nearly murdered as many ways as possible, almost as if it were a comedic recreation of the Death of Rasputin (or Vigo the Carpathian). I must admit, it feels a little cathartic in light of his track record in later years.

It seems Nordberg (Simpson) stumbled onto one of arch-villain Ludwig's (Ricardo Montalban) criminal plots and Khan wanted the bumbling officer rubbed out. Unfortunately for Ludwig, it only puts Frank and the Police Squad onto his trail. This leads to an investigation where Frank meets the love of his life... who is played by Priscilla Presley, a wholesome secretary who is inadvertently caught up in Ludwig's plot to kill Queen Elizabeth at a baseball game.

It's all silly fun laced with innuendo, sight gags, and pratfalls... not quite the loving send up to Noir that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was, but also not a soulless, dime-a-dozen parody movie of the likes that have been churned out the past twenty years or so. It's hard to imagine how anyone survives in this universe, where airbags cause cars to careen wildly on their own and alleged real life murderers can survive dozens of shots (and burns and a bear trap).

I really love Ricardo Montalban... he's always a good villain and had a tremendous sense of melodrama, always playing it straight even when he delivered the hammiest of lines. And, as ever, there's always something to be said about Leslie Nielsen. From Forbidden Planet on up to his late career (which was almost all comedy and parody), Nielsen had the greatest of deadpan faces and his timing was always the best.

Rest in peace, the both of you.

Quick shout out to George Kennedy, whom we last saw on Couchbound in Charade. He does a terrific job as the Captain playing the pseudo-straight man to Drebin. I love the bit at the state dinner where Frank picks his pocket and an innocent party goer is accused of sleeping with the Captain's wife!

All in all, The Naked Gun is classic Zucker Bros. comedy while they (and their regular players) were in their prime... something that's more than a rarity nowadays. It's not as great as, say, Airplane... but it comes pretty close. And, man, that death scene for Montalban at the end? It just slays me. Especially when the marching band starts playing "Louie, Louie."

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Fifty-two - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "I love you, Benedict, but you're no Ricardo Montalban"

Despite the tremendous job that JJ Abrams is doing rebooting the Star Trek franchise into summer movie blockbusters, I'm personally of the opinion that that classics remain so for a good reason.

While young Kirk and Spock are gallivanting around the galaxy, taking on klingons, gene warriors, and deus ex'd uber-cruisers in Abrams' version, the original crew were taking small, personal journeys with cosmic consequences that didn't have to rely on glitz and glamour, but were instead morality plays on duty, honor, revenge, and friendship.

Abrams tries, but it's mostly lost in the dramatic action set-pieces and grand CGI crashes. While the vistas are amazing, I still think the models and matte effects were better. Though arguments could be made either way concerning the acting.

Take The Wrath of Khan for example.

Yes, there are obvious plot holes and it's a slow starter, but the sheer charisma that Ricardo Montalban exudes makes up for his plastic supporting crew (only one of whom actually speaks), and his singular quest for vengence that ties back to his and Kirk's encounters back in The Original Series, makes for much more entertaining and satisfying resolutions than Into Darkness' denouement.

Still, I shouldn't compare them, really. They are two separate movies, after all... it's just that Abrams makes it so we have to.

Really, I'm not here blogging about 2013's Wrath, so I'll stop and return to the original.

I so very much love both the first and the third acts of this film. I have nothing against the second, where Kirk and the Enterprise tussle with Khan and the Reliant for the first time, but that Kobayashi Maru sequence of Kirstie Alley's and the post test scenes where Kirk ruminates on getting old and useless are just great... and that final speech of Khan's to the viewscreen, quoting Moby Dick? It's both iconic and delicious. The way Montalban chews on that scene, and every scene with pretty much no help from his supporting crew, makes me so happy.

Yes, the solutions are simple and obvious, with rational folks wondering why the heck Scotty didn't just go in and sacrifice himself earlier (considering he knew what the stakes where), but "the needs of the many" speech rings so much more true than Chris Pine's in 2013.

Gah! I'm doing it again.

I've waited forever to watch Wrath on Netflix. Not because Into Darkness was coming up and I needed to prepare for the eventuality of Cumberbatch's character... and, also, not because I wanted to compare both second entries of the respective series. No, the true reason I've delayed so long in watching Wrath is that I wanted the original Star Trek:The Motion Picture to make it on the stream so I could watch them in order.

It's been so long since I watched V'Ger assimilate Illia... and Decker commit the ultimate sacrifice.

So, I waited.

Until I couldn't wait any longer.

Wrath is still the best Star Trek movie for me, in any reality, though I do not have the disdain for the TNG Trek films that most do. Montalban makes the film and Spock's parting words always ring so much more true than any other platitude the many films have tried the bring across.

I truly wish Abrams films were smaller, more personal stories instead of the grand, sweeping epics of adventure that he has created... but I understand the necessity. No executives would fund them, I think, thanks to the need for franchises to be bloated money-grabbers for studios and their investors. All we can hope for are the non-franchise films to take up the slack. Films like Moon, Gravity, and the like.

Here's hoping.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~