The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
1991 · Directed by David Zucker
Original language: English
- comedy
- crime
The story
Bumbling lieutenant Frank Drebin is out to foil the big boys in the energy industry, who intend to suppress technology that will put them out of business.
What it’s like
Bright, flat, sitcom-clean compositions: bland office interiors, sunlit Los Angeles streets, and a fair amount of tidy studio lighting that makes every gag land in plain view, shot in the unfussy house style of early-nineties studio comedy. The camera mostly sits still and lets the performers fire off jokes, with the frame doing as much work as the lines: a deadpan actor stands dead-centre while absurd props, signs and background business sprawl across the edges. The soundtrack is a bouncy, brass-accented score with cartoonish stings for each pratfall, and the dialogue is rapid-fire wordplay that often gets drowned out by its own visual punchlines. Its vibe is goofy, unbothered and cheerfully daft, with a satirical sheen on its political and corporate targets that never really bites. Slapstick is frequent but cartoonish rather than gory, and the violence is mostly bumps, gunplay and exploding objects, with some suggestive innuendo and crude humour throughout. Pacing is brisk and gag-to-gag, so it works well for a lazy evening or background laughter, for people who enjoy absurd spoofs, parodies of thrillers and mock-serious cops who remain blithely oblivious to their own chaos.
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