Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

Many films that used to be successful and entertaining don’t look good with passage of time. It can happen to comedies with jokes that don’t look that funny after certain social mores have changed or their topics lost any relevancy. In the case of The Naked Gun 2½ : The Smell of Fear, 1991 comedy directed by David Zucker, sequel to popular The Naked Gun, this happened due to some jokes not being that funny in light of recent geopolitical and global economic developments.

Leslie Nielsen returns in the role of the protagonist, LAPD Lt. Frank Drebin. Plot begins in White House, where Drebin, due to his successes against drug dealers, is invited to attend dinner hosted by President George H. W. Bush (played by John Roarke). The President announces that his top energy advisor Dr. Albert Meinheimer (played by Richard Griffiths) would soon recommend new national energy policy. Meinheimer is known as proponent of clean and renewable energy, which doesn’t sit well with the top lobbyists and executives of coal, oil and nuclear power industry. Oil executive Quentin Hapsburg (played by Robert Goulet) devises devious plan to take Dr. Meinheimer out. Drebin gets involved in those events because his former girlfriend Jane Spencer (played by Priscilla Presley) works in Meinheimmer’s office. After explosion in Meinheimmer’s institute Drebin begins investigation with the help of Captain Ed Hocken (played by George Kennedy) and Detective Nordberg (played by O. J. Simpson).

The easiest way to describe The Smell of Fear is to say that it didn’t age well. Unlike its predecessor, which was work of ZAZ (David Zucker, Jim Abrachams and Jerry Zucker), one of the most formidable trios in history of Hollywood, second film in the series was written by David Zucker and Pat Proft. Some elements of ZAZ formula – irreverent and iconoclastic humour – are here, but saturation comedy, which served ZAZ so well in Airplane!, here proves to be a double-edged sword. When so many jokes and gags being thrown at the screen in relatively short amount of time, it is better that at least majority of them being good. When they are not, like here, film might look worse than it actually is. Some jokes here indeed funny, but freshness of the original is gone and many actor, including otherwise talented Leslie Nielsen, simply go through the motions.

The main problem of the film is something that would plague many Hollywood parodies in next decades – too much reliance on the present day, which makes references and jokes incomprehensible for future generations. Apart from some friendly digs at popular culture, like parody of famous scene in Ghost, objects of humour relate almost exclusively on the state of US politics at that particular period of history. George Bush Senior, whose wife Barbara (played by Margery Ross) repeatedly gets victim of protagonist’s clumsiness, was the most powerful politician in the world and anyone believed that he would easily be re-elected due to military triumph in First World War. Zucker in the film repeatedly expressed his displeasure with US Democratic Party as well as doubts in its ability to get into White House ever again (something, that would only a year later, be changed thanks to relatively unknown Bill Clinton). But the film gives even more emphasis on environmental issues, which became focus of interest of the more crusade-prone elements within American society after the end of Cold War. Zucker clearly takes side of environmentalists and the popular notions of renewable energy being a solution and coal, oil and nuclear power being a problem. Those notions, which were in past years embraced by the Western establishment without proper considerations and long-term planning, are in many ways responsible for a lot of mess world is now. And it is all but certain that some people in Europe this winter would have some difficulty laughing while they watch this film in their frozen homes.

RATING: 4/10 (+)