Long Road to Ruin: The Naked Gun Trilogy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and or
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opinions expressed by anyone speaker does not explicitly or necessarily
reflect or represent those of Mark Ratleage or W two
M Network. Please listen with caution or don't listen at all.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
He can't with sequels in his bag, Reboot, Silphos, the
pop chactag. Shall we sutorize the Fall, the Share series

(00:52):
and forget their names?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
He survives We've seen this five times?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Begin?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Do I disappoint?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Love you so low?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
That was? Uh? That was done twenty minutes ago. I
was like, I reem, yeah, yeah, you whipped that together.
It's well, I couldn't find Alexis's logo, that is why
it's not at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
But and here I was, and here I was feeling
bad because I was sitting here the I was wasting
several minutes trying to get my webcam just right, and
you're over here finishing up a whole ass feet song.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yep, that was I. So. The great thing about chat
ept is that it remembers things that we've done, not
always perfectly, but enough that I can get it to go, hey,
I need a theme for Long Road through and it
needed to be about thirty seconds worth of lyrics to
throw into Suno and it was like right, and he
gave me. He gave me two verses, was like here

(02:20):
you go, pal and so yeah, that's that's chat Ept's
interpretation of our Long Road to Ruin through.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Song thank You. I love it.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
That's as close to the Fruit Fighters as I can get, by.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
The way, you know what, the Foo Fighters had their time.
I am glad that we got away with it for
as long as we did. But you know, it's kind
of like, uh oh, by the way up the cuffs,
everybody were starting early. It's kind of like Tommy Dreamer
being able to walk out to Men in the Box
or the Sandman actually being able to come out to

(02:53):
Metallica's enter Sandman.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
So tonight, here on the Long Road to Ruin, we
are we're doing something kind of like we did two
weeks ago where there's a new movie in theater, so
we figured we haven't done the we haven't done the
old trilogy relative to the new movie. So here we
are we're doing the Naked Gun tonight. And before I

(03:16):
throw it over to Sean for his thoughts. In the beginning,
there was Police Squad, a six episode blip on the
nineteen eighty two television landscape that arrived too small, too fast,
and arguably two ahead of its time to survive network TV.
But in those six episodes, creators Jim Abrams, David Zucker,

(03:39):
and Jerry Zucker, collectively known as Zazz, planted a flag
for a brand of comedy that refused to slow down
for anyone, a rapid fire barrage of visual gags, puns,
and metal humor that treated every frame as an opportunity
for absurdity. Born in the wake of airplane disasa's genre
defining disaster movie spoof, Police Squad was their attempt to

(04:02):
bring that same sensibility to the cop procedural. Dad, stop
arguing with me, Sorry, I have a tick. It failed
on television, but like so many cult phenomena, it didn't die.
It evolved, and six years later the naked gun from
the files of Police Squad hit theaters Like a cream pie,
who a Horse's ass and Hollywood seriousness. The joke finally

(04:25):
landed and audiences never stopped laughing. Tonight, on this long
road to ruin, We're taking a look back at the
Naked Gun trilogy, a cornerstone of cinematic parody that still
shapes how we laughed today. But to understand why it worked,
we have to understand where it came from. The Zucker Brothers,
along with Jim Abrams, weren't just jokesters. They were structuralists.

(04:49):
They understood the genres they were spoofing better than the
people making them. Airplane didn't just mock disaster movies. It
was a beat for beat recreation of the nineteen fifty
seven film Zero Hour with jokes layered into its DNA.
And that's what made it funny. People. The tension was real.
The absurdity lived in the margins. The same craft powered

(05:13):
The Naked Gun, anchored by the eternally dead pan Leslie Nielsen, who,
by the way, whose transformation from dramatic actor to comedy
legend is one of the great pivots in Hollywood history,
but that has influenced an end in the eighties. You
can draw a direct line from The Naked Gun to
the Scary Movie franchise, which the Zuckers were ironically brought

(05:34):
into salvage by the early two thousands. The difference by
then the parody genre had turned from precision sat tired
or reference soup. Where Naked Gun built its jokes on
the bones of genre logic, scary movie simply pointed and laughed.
The targets got lazier, the punchlines broader, and the genre
collapsed under the weight of its own indifference. That collapse

(05:56):
coincided with another cultural shift, the rise of any poisoned
Internet humor post nine to eleven. Political sensitivities and the
growing climate of digital self policing made it harder not
just to smooth institutions, but to laugh at ourselves. The
Naked Gun trilogy wants a fearless send up of the

(06:16):
justice system, media sensationalism, and masculine incompetence. Now feels like
a relic of a time when comedy was allowed to
punch in all directions and folks. That's why this trilogy
matters still, because The Naked Gun reminds us what real
parody looks like. It's not just or impressions, its structure,
rhythm timing, its reverence for the form even when the

(06:38):
content is beyond absurd, and above all, it's a mirror
held up not just to the genres we love but
to the culture. We live in, a culture that now
more than ever, could use a little more self awareness
and a little more permission to laugh. I love this
series of movies. I love the Zucker Brothers. I grew

(07:01):
up watching Airplane, Airplane two. Obviously, these naked gun movies.
I like. It was like the Zarker Brothers and mel
Brooks mel Brooks Shawan. That's that's the soccer brothers, mel Brooks,
Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor and Robin Williams. Those are
the five legs on the on the very weirdly built

(07:21):
table that formed my comedy scaffolding.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Sorry, is this you throwing it to me? Or was
there more?

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Nope, I'm taking a breath for you to jump in
and tell me about naked gun in comedy at large.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Okay, I'm sorry. I was kind of pondering everything you
were saying because I, to my surprise, I think we
might end up disagreeing a little bit more after hearing
your opinion than I had originally anticipated. Okay, this is
actually the first time that I have seen all three
movies in their entirely.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Really, yeah, really.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
The first one. It's so funny that you talk about
rapid fire comedy, because one of the things that I
appreciated most about first movie was it's restraint, believe it
or not, and it's pacing in the fact that it
allows jokes to land, It allows that, it allows them

(08:27):
to breathe, it allows them to do what they came
to do, and then it lets them go off and
beyond their merry way. None of this you know Will
Ferrell business, where a gag can span on for a
good three, four or five minutes out a clip until
you just go end for Christ's sake, and got to

(08:49):
anything else but end something. Family Guy apes embarrassingly actually,
But I feel like part of the problem is that
as it starts to move on to a duology and
then finally to a trilogy, it loses more and more

(09:15):
sight of kind of the genuine, heartfelt absurdism of the
first movie and really gets away from, I think, really
lampooning the heart and soul of police procedure, Wills in general,
and more and more into the second movie feeling more

(09:36):
and more like they want to start kind of jabbing
at Bruce Willis movies like The Last Boy Scout, and
by the third movie, it's you know, obviously not ironic
at all that you bring up the Scary Movie Series,
because I'm not a fan of the Scary Movie Series
by any stretch. I saw the first one in theaters

(09:59):
and that was probably one too many for me. But
the reason I think it's funny that you bring that
up is because I think that thirty three in the
third were where the more obnoxious threads of that kind
of degradation of parody really start to show and bloom,

(10:22):
and where what was once kind of intelligent commentary that
somehow felt timeless in its execution, well while obviously being
you know, very obviously at a certain time in its esthetics,
into something that from two and a half onwards starts

(10:42):
to feel more and more and more dated, and less
and less and less thoughtful and measured and artful in
in terms of communic execution, and just more and more
like regurgitated late night monologues.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Really disagree with that, it's definitely I think the first
two were very strong, and I think the third one
suffers from changing director. So let's get through these. First one,
The Naked God. The Naked The Naked God from the
Files of Police Squad is a nineteen eighty eight American
crime action comedy film directed by David Zucker, produced and

(11:21):
released by Paramount. That film starts Leslie Nielsen as the
bumbling police lieutenant Frank Dreben. This was budgeted at fourteen
ft five million dollars was a smash hit. A box
office was one hundred and fifty two point four million dollars.
I've I just watched this again with my kids. This

(11:43):
is hilarious. Like I still it's like drop dead funny.
One of the things I love about The Naked Gun
the original. First of all, it obviously rests on the
back of Leslie Nielsen. You know I mentioned before his
deadpan delivery. It starts just the deadpan delivery. He's not
necessarily obtuse or stoic. It's he does so much acting

(12:06):
with his eyes and just little gestures. It's really funny.
It's like this is the This is some of the
best subtle comedy in an over the top parody. It's
a weird juxtaposition because he he does things like he'll
drive his car and like he always like parks it
on the curb and it's it's a parking meter or something.

(12:28):
By the by the second movie, I think my daughter
was like, some would take his license away, this is ridiculous,
but like he he's living, he's doing the best that
he can. He's doing his level best, and he's kind
of this very archaic throwback to like greatest generation masculinity,

(12:51):
you know, early boomer masculinity in a world that.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
I mean, that's that is that is kind of his.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Generation, Yeah, in a world that has very much moved
on from that, for better or for worse. But his
reactions to things are hilarious. Like he causes chaos. He's
an agent of chaos. Everything blows up around him, everything
is hot, wet, and on fire, and his reaction is
usually one of these, you know, and it's unlike a

(13:21):
lot of like modern comedy, a lot of modern parody
over the last twenty to thirty years, what Leslie Nilsen
does was almost like underreact. Whereas everyone's overreacting, he's underreacting.
And because he's underreacting to something that is so obviously
something that you cause more of a reaction, it's hilariously funny,

(13:42):
but he's not almost He does.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
So strategically though, Yeah, and it's I've been wanting to
make this comparison so I'd like to knock this out
of the way first.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
When I was watching this for the first time, all
the way through beginning to end in one sitting, you
want to know what the first movie was. It came
to mind get Smart, and not entirely in a favorable way.
And I say that as someone who thinks that Get
Smart probably deserves to rank up there as one of

(14:13):
the better television to movie adaptations of all time. But
the difference being is I feel like Zaz and Leslie
Nielsen and Priscilla Presley and George Kennedy and Oja believe
it or not kind of understand something that gets smart,

(14:36):
and a lot of movies like It did that. I
don't know that the Naked Gun sequels necessarily did. And
that is for absurdism to really hit the way it's
supposed to be the best way that it can, you
kind of have to be all or nothing. It tends
to work best when it's a world where everything is absurd,

(15:00):
because then you're not necessarily just playing off horrified or
shocked reactions all the time. It's all the more amusing
because yes, someone like Frank Grevin can be an absolutely
knit wid but it's barely more chaotic and nonsensical than
everything that's going on around everybody else at the time.

(15:22):
So everyone's just kind of playing it right off, but
they're not doing it in that kind of creating, excessively
self aware way that Joss Whedon has report has unfortunately
cursed modern screenwriting with It's not mar it's not Marvel,

(15:42):
punching at the fourth wall self awareness, but still Leslie
Nielsen or in this case, Frank Grevin is a character
who doesn't know he's in a movie, who doesn't know
that these are necessarily exceptional circumstances for him. Every everything,
all the chaos around him is for most intensive purposes

(16:05):
a Tuesday. And that's kind of what I like when
I see actors like Leslie Nielsen and like Liam Neeson,
since we're talking about the Naked Gun who are serious,
dramatically schooled actors who are stepping into comedy. I feel

(16:25):
like they come in with kind of a different sense
of situational awareness and nuance and sometimes even a little
bit of humanity that lets them inject something that's a
little more relatable to characters while still keeping the humor
right there, and sometimes even finding unique ways to amplify it.

(16:47):
I look at it as kind of being the equal
but opposite to what worked for Pat Marita in translating
from being a comedic actor to a dramatic dramatic actor.
Is it brings forth kind of a different sort of
awareness of the human condition. Another one that I point

(17:09):
to is Robin Williams is another great example when he
wants to be I think Jim Carrey can be an
outstanding examples. I'd say the same thing for Steve Carell,
since we kind of brought up that whole will Ferrell universe.
It's an idea they bring a different flavor to those
dramatic roles, the same way that someone like a Leslie

(17:31):
Nielsen has maybe a little more patience, a little bit
more of a sense of a sense of timing and
of mood than someone who's kind of maybe always on
and very hyperprenetic is going to bring to a scene.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
One thing I noticed watching this movie with my kids
especially was how how dated like it's funny visually the
performances are funny, but there's an element of they are
I was trying to explain to my kids they're mocking

(18:11):
in the naked gun in police but they're mocking the
old like police procedurals in the way that movies were
made back in like the black and white era, Like
there was a way that you know, people delivered speeches,
the way that they delivered dialogue, that this is trying
to ape. And if you don't know that, if you

(18:31):
really don't know like the kind of like the history
of the hard boiled detective movie, you know, or the
police procedural, then a lot of Leslie Nilsen's line readings
are well, funny, don't don't hit the way they're supposed to.
And that's one of the things I was trying to
tell them. I was like, this is very much making
fun of a very specific style of film. The other

(18:53):
thing was, when you're making a comedy, you kind of
have two choices. You can have to make a very general,
it'll appeal to everybody, will be evergreen kind of comedy,
or you can make a comedy that is very much
of the moment of the now. The Naked Gun was
very much of the now when it was made. That
opening scene where he attacks all like the actions of

(19:14):
evil world leaders, you know, like Kadaffi, and like there
were I can't remember who else was in that scene,
but there was a the ayatola. Again, if you're a
kid and you're watching this, you're like, I don't even
know whose they just looked like dressed up funny people.
Like No, these were you know, or like just a
random array of like stereotypes and these were supposed to

(19:36):
be them.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
To me, it felt actually less gratuitously timely and topical
than the two movies that came after. I think I
think Naked Gun, in terms of its execution of what's
going for, feels the most timeless of the three, despite
the fact that we've got that, We're featuring Reggie Jackson
in a fucking Angels uniform, Rodan Zones, a young oj

(19:59):
a young Oji Jay Simpson con is our villain. Yeah,
a blonde, young and hot Priscilla Presley is our love interest.
And we've got and we've got boxy Sedan's the size
of aircraft carriers, And yet it feels less dated than
two and a half despite being made five five years.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
I think I'm comparing it to other types of its ilk,
not within its own trilogy, so I can make my
point and move on with this. Like I said, I
liked watching it and it still makes me laugh. But
it definitely for me, fell very much dated in that
if you don't know what was happening back then, a

(20:39):
lot of the humor gets lost on you. And and
I know that because I had to explain it to
my kids, and I would imagine And which brings me
to my next point. This is a very old movie.
What do you mean by that? Well, I'm the obvious
when I think about modern attention spans, when I think
about the ability to be quiet long enough or off

(20:59):
your phone long enough to get subtle humor, to pick
up the little easter eggs in the scene, to catch
the nuances and performance I I I would struggle to
show this to to like mot to you know, gen Z,
because I don't think they would. I don't think they
would pay enough attention to what's happening. And that's that's

(21:22):
the thing. What the Zarker brothers got. What's what Seth
McFarland seems to know but doesn't always execute, was how
and you know with mel Brooks was a master of
was how funny the details were that you that you
know Roberts thing about. I'd like a movie that forces
me to pay attention to it. These guys that I
just talked about to a lesser extent, Seth McFarland came

(21:46):
from the school of you make art that makes people
pay attention, which is a lost art right now. Modern
entertainment is made for people scrolling on phones, and I
mean while they're watching the art watching that's that's verifiable
fact that like read that in studies, whereas these movies
were made by people who were master craftsmen and very

(22:06):
much seeped in detail. So there's a lot of detail
in the Naked Gun and if you're not paying attention,
you miss half of what makes this funny. Also, I
don't think a lot of people would have patience for
the dialogue now. It's very deliberate and you have to
pay it and you have to pay attention to it.
Is like it seems like fluff. And then you realize
when you're really when you're really keen into it and

(22:27):
you're really paying attention, you're like, you're if you are
absent mindedly watching this, for very passively watching this, you're
missing the very reason it's so goddamn funny. The last
thing I'm gonna say, I'll let you close it out
and then we'll move on to The Naked Gun too.
I have to give credit where credit to do. Priscilla
Presley is funnier than I remember her being, and she

(22:48):
kind of gets she gets a lot funnier in the
next two. She's like one of the hot well, she's
like one of the One of the things that gets
better with this series is a lot of people she
gets better. She's a little awkward in the first one,
like she's not used to acting, and then by the
third one she very much knows her role and what
she's doing and what she's trying to ape, and it

(23:10):
gets even and she could becomes some one of the
highlights of those movies. But the I very much enjoy.
This is one of those where I would watch it again,
you know, in a few years remind myself of how
funny this shit is. Jokes about the Queen again. You
would not know today why that's so funny back then.

(23:34):
I think people when people think of police, this last thing,
I'll say, when people think of police procedural, if they
think of law and order, and it's a different kind
of police procedural than what the Naked Guns making fun of.
H I don't so if someone was like, oh, if
you like police procedurals and you like parodies of police procedurals,
you should watch The Naked Gun. And I don't think
it would connect with those people like it. It's a

(23:54):
very as we're talking about it, I find myself saying, guys,
this is really funny. I don't know if any of
you are gonna get it, though. I'll give you the
last word on the Naked Gun and we'll move on.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
And this kid's not sure Toxified Reddit bullshit is really
why Blazing Saddles couldn't get mad, because Blazing Saddles is
of a smarter, more aware, as you pointed out, more detailed,
driven time. And granted they're completely different, different approach to satire.

(24:29):
I would I would describe Mel's approach as being more
like a Friar's club roast of cinema m more than
more than anything else. And again I stress, I cannot
mean that in a nicer way. I love Melbrooks movies,
I adore Melbrooks, but it's very it's a very different

(24:53):
kind of commentary from the way thats here are trying
to more so send up a genre and its tropes
and really kind of do so with a loving age.
I made the Get Smart comparison earlier, and really what
I think it comes down to is the fact that
that's what this is. This is leaning into absurdism, whereas

(25:15):
gets Smart could never quite lean fully into it, where
where everything surrounding Maxwell Smart was as ridiculous as he was.
Or in this case, you know, Leslie Nielsen is not
portraying a bull in a china shop. He's not Jerry Lewis,
He's not Will Ferrell. He's a straight man surrounded by that,

(25:41):
surrounded by madness, and somehow finding a way to both
lean into it and just kind of keep that perfect
composure even in the most insane bumbling of moments, he
kind of never needs it. And that right there is
just is just something to see. Is just you know,
Frank Drevin not losing his shit, whether he's brawling on

(26:04):
a Major League baseball field or punching out a room
full of Islamic terrorists. And I feel like as the
movie starts, as the movie start to lean kind of
more and more topical and trying to be more and
more timely. That's what I mean when I said this
one kind of feels the least of its time. Is Yes,
you can look at it and you can very plainly

(26:27):
tell before we get to get to a Jay Johnstone
and Reggie Jackson sharing a baseball field that this was
a movie of the mid eighties, But at the same time,
not everything else about it really feels quite so strictly
of that period. It feels like something that you can

(26:47):
translate to a different setting with new actors like Pamela
Anderson and Leam Mowson. And while you might have to
tweak some things to update it a little bit, it
could still have very much the same feel, the same heart,
and the same soul to it that you know, for
those who can kind of set their short attention spans aside,

(27:09):
give the chance. Really kind of makes it potentially as
appealing now as it was in nineteen eighty six in
the first five years.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
The Naked Gun two and a half Haha, See What's
Funny There Is is a nineteen ninety one American crime
comedy sequel, obviously to the eighty eight movie and the
most commercially successful solment of the Naked Gun series. This
added Robert Gulay, Richard Griffiths, and JEJH. La Gabor Mel

(27:46):
Tourmeat and the members of the Chicago Bears who have cameos.
So this thing, they up the budget to twenty three
million and it made one hundred and ninety two million. Now,
just to be clear, this one was directed by David's
or the last one was directed by David Zucker. We
have a director change when we get to third, but
we'll talk about it in a few minutes. So this

(28:09):
one does a lot of making fun of George H. W. Bush, which, again,
if you're watching it with a youngster, you have to
explain a lot of that stuff. I think I think
the big switch here for me is this is the
movie that feels that most feels like its own thing

(28:29):
and not and not, Hey, we're making fun of something
very specific here. This movie is about that. The Naked
Gun two and a half feels more about Frank and
you know, and I can't remember the character's Namail Presley's
character Jane, Frank and Jane. Here's a story about Jack
and I am. This feels more about Frank and Jane

(28:54):
and their misadventures in the whole police squad gang and
less about we're making fun of a specific genre. It's
a lot of the same jokes, but like like a
lot of movies, and I think maybe to its credit,
as you know, when we make this claim, it's usually
because we're we're criticizing. It's more of what was funny

(29:16):
about the first movie and less of the cultural attachments
to what it was what it was making fun of.
The Naked Gun two and a half almost operates as
like its own movie in that if you didn't have
the first Naked Gun and you won't have the third one,
you could have released this one independently, independent of Police

(29:41):
Squad and everything else, and it would have worked just fine. Then.
I think The Naked Gun's probably two and a half
biggest success as a movie is the fact that it
is funny in and of itself. It doesn't have to
rely on it's cultural attachments. It could just be a

(30:02):
funny comedy. You didn't have to see the first one.
You didn't have to know anything about Police Squad, you
don't have to know anything about police procedurals. This is
one where you sit down, you watch it, and it's hilarious,
and the only thing that might escape you is that
some of the bush humor doesn't really land unless you
know what he was like back then if you live
through it. What are your thoughts on The Naked Gun
two and a half, Well, A lot.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Of what you apparently liked about it was apparently a
lot of what put me off of it. I kind
of liked how tightly focused the first movie was, and
this one just felt like someone was fed a twenty
four hour stream of Late Night Model. And you know
we complained about chet GPT regurgitating, nonsensical, unfocused are fuck me,

(30:54):
this is proof of why God did nothing worse than mankind,
ever than Jay Leno. Oh, actually it might have been
attle bit before in Leno's time, because this was ninety one.
When did Leno take over about ninety one ninety two,
But still it was but still it was kind of
around the same time when whereas Naked Gun felt a

(31:20):
little more thoughtful and not just its jokes, but it's
understated timing and its execution sometimes and how it knew
just when to execute a pratfall, this one feels like
it falls prey to that kind of comedic trap of
thinking that just pointing something and laughing at it as

(31:41):
tantamount to a joke, and it just kind of does
that incessantly throughout the movie at just kind of one
bit of headline thodder after another. The Bush stuff doesn't
really land because I didn't even choose a particularly interesting
Bush impersonator. Jesus, it's a sequel to a comedy hit.

(32:02):
You couldn't have gotten Dana Carvey's phone number. Instead, they
got one who's you know, very uncanny. Uncanny Valley impression
of Bush is impressive, as is his counterpart playing Barbara.
That's just not particularly interesting to watch it. It feels

(32:22):
kind of out of place. Hell, we've you want to
talk about topic, You've got a Johnson New New joke
within the first ten minutes of the goddamn movie. You
want to talk about humored, You've got to explain to somebody,
I mean, George Herbert Walker. Bush has at least been
passingly referenced in probably about the last four or five years.

(32:46):
I don't think I've thought of the name JOHNSONUKNU since
twenty sixteen or so, maybe even further back than that.
And that kind of sets the tone for the entire
for the entire movie. And it's a fortunate because while
the first one feels lightheart, lighter hearted, this one just

(33:07):
feels it feels, but yeah, it feels like it's sometimes
trying to sound smarter than it actual than it actually
is capable of, which is unfortunate because there's some great
parts of it too. Leslie Niessen once More, or Leslie Nielsen,
Leslie Nielsen, Leslie Nielsen, Leslie Nielsen turns in a phenomenal performance,

(33:29):
absolutely worthy of the first one. Once More. Priscilla Presley
shows why she's She's just so earnest and so sweet
and so genuine in playing this torn rom this torn
wounded romantic lead that again, it just it just offsets
the matt caps silliness, just flawssy, just like George Kennedy

(33:53):
not being the exasperated, the exasperated chief, but being very
much kind of the Commissioner Gordon of the bunch. Much
as I hate to say it, OJ is once more putting.
It is once more absolutely putting in.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Work gets to do stuff in this movie. As opposed
to the first one, Well.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Man, you can tell as a nineties movie because fully
about half of the half of one whole sequence and
just nothing but OJ getting dragged. Of course, it's the
early nineties. Man couldn't stop getting dragged and man, there's
that moment where someone says something like you can't trust
white people or something like that. You see Nordberg in

(34:38):
the backward just kind of go and man, knowing how
that turned out, that's like watching Chris Ben. That was
like watching Chris Ben while walk under a ladder, and
some and some hyper aware painter just goes, hey, buddy,
watch your head. Someone could get hurt. It just kind
of knowing how, knowing how this and just going, oh, Jesus,

(35:02):
let me pretend I didn't see that. But Robert Goulay
is just a terrifically ridiculous villain. Even if the plot,
if the plot does once more come down to boo
energy conservation equals socialism. That's that's about. That's about the

(35:22):
extent of the intelligent humor in this movie. That that
and some quips about democrats putting somebody up for off
a second actually get elected.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Good to see nothing has changed, No, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Unfortunately, But by the end of it it was mostly fun.
What it did well, It did really well. It's just
that I thought the humor kind of had me rolling
my eyes by about halfway. By about halfway through, so

(35:57):
a lot of it wasn't really landing after that.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
So the first when we watched just it was it
was nine o'clock at night or later possibly, and it
was myself and my two kids. The second one I
watched during my lunch hour and my only my son
joined me for that one. Look. We laughed. We laughed
a lot. We laughed, if not more than the first one,
at least as much. But I will tell you this

(36:19):
the one element that I will agree with you, and
I kind of thought about it after and as we've
been talking, the movie does feel this is a problem
with a lot of comedy, especially a lot of modern
more and so now a lot of modern comedy then
back then. But so Hollywood has enough has an obtuse
issue where, you know, because it's in a bubble and

(36:40):
it's disconnected from the rest of the world. Seemingly, they
tend to operate from a place of, you know, patronizing
their audience. They tend to operate from you know, we
are the elite and we know better, and we're gonna
not only laugh, We're not gonna make funny jokes about
this or that, but we're gonna laugh at you. Specifically

(37:01):
fly Over Country, We're gonna laugh at you, specifically Middle America,
and they got away with it for any number of years.
But and you can see it in this movie. This movie,
unlike the first one, the first one doesn't come across
as mean spirited. This one does. This one comes across
like we we know better and we know what's funny,

(37:25):
and we're gonna make fun of the things that we
think are stupid and bad, and you're gonna laugh at
it because watching a you know, watching these characters do
funny stuff is funny. But underneath it all, like Frank
molesting the queen in the first one is funny because

(37:46):
the queen is not to be touched and seeing a
character like that, you know, it's kind of like a
Betty Hill type of humor, Like we're really gonna take
the piss out of something that is considered untouchable. That's
what makes it fun. Barbara Bush treating giving Barbara Bush
the same treatment as the queen, but amping up the violence.
I mean, he like he flat up like this is

(38:08):
it's one thing where Frank accidentally falls on the queen
and it looks sexual and they actually make a joke
out of that, Like it isn't just Aha, we're molesting
the queen. We're taking down royalty, aren't we funny? It's
that's that here. They're not really doing that with Barbara Bush.
They're they're doing Gosh, we hate Republicans and we hate

(38:29):
this dumpy broad so we'll have Frank Drabbon punch her.
But we'll do it as kind of an accident, because
if he's straight up, like clocks are in the face,
that's bad. But if he's doing it while massacring a lobster,
it's funny. And it's like, no, it's like it is
because watching a man punch a woman is funny. You
heard it here first while playing with his lobster. But

(38:54):
when you take a step back and you realize what
the intent is, like, oh, you guys are just being
bullies now, And it really does come across like you
just don't like the Bush family. You don't like Barbara Bush,
like for whatever the reasons are. So there's that, and
then the whole story revolving around environmentalism is very much

(39:14):
like everybody who thinks oil and non renewable resources sucks
in his bed and we're tearing them down, and where
we're in the right because conservation is right.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
We even Hadvaldez joke.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Like this. This comes across like there's a clear right
and wrong. We're right, they're wrong, and we're gonna shame
them with comedy and and and that's in considering this
is their movie and they and one of the things
that Rush Limbad did which I really liked, and what
Family Guy did and Seth and Farland did was they
had Rush come on the show. They had Rush come

(39:49):
on Family Guy. And Rush even made a point of
saying this on his radio show when he was alive.
He was like, they could have torn me apart. I was,
I was gonna do it no matter what. But they
really could have made me look bad. They didn't. They
gave me and the opposition to me, everyone who works
on that show. By the way, week fifty fifty, it

(40:10):
was a fair episode. There was enough of good Rush,
enough of bad Rushing, enough of good liberalism and bad
liberalism really balance out that episode to let the let
the audience do what they're supposed to do, which is
make up their minds for themselves. That's appen. Then they
had done two and a half.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
And I will, I will set my personal biases aside
because according to those biases, yes, I did have a
good little giggle at watching bushes to get taken down
a peg. That's funny to me. But objectively, just like
I would have to I would have to do with
a lot of left leaning humor, I got to admit

(40:50):
when the humor just doesn't land in execution. And I
think that was kind of my bigger problem than the biases,
Maybe even more so than the fact that, like I said,
that everything had to be so fucking topical, was just
the fact that the jokes they were attempting either weren't

(41:11):
very good to begin with, or they were decent jokes,
and they just executed them awfully, because instead of sticking
to what worked and to what they knew worked, they
instead decided to chase the zeitgeist just a little bit
too hard, and they got a little bit too winto
doing that before the finish line. And that's why the

(41:33):
end of the movie, just like the end of the
third movie, tends to really drag, yeah, to the point
where that last twenty minutes really starts to feel like
about another thirty past a certain point.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
All right, I think we got it. You got anything
else with the Naked gone two and a half.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Not really, it's still watchable. It's it's by no means
the worst the series would get, as we're about to
see with thirty three and a third because g is
fucking Christ. But you can see where they're starting to
learn to lose focus and they had an opportunity to
maybe turn it around and get back to what really

(42:12):
hit the most. But instead, you know, under new management,
doubled down on everything that was going to make that
was bound to make the movie disposable, and well we
kind of got.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
What we got. Well, very last thing I'll say on
this is the first two there's there's cohesive, there's a
cohesiveness in style, a change in director. For the third
one there's a sharp decline in style in the sense

(42:47):
and we say this a lot, so why I'm bringing
it up now as connective tissue to jump into the
third ones as we transition. A lot of times we
talk about like when someone takes over a franchise. We've
discussed a lot on Long Road to Ruin. When there's
a new director, a new creative team that takes over
a franchise, they often come in not really knowing what

(43:07):
made the first installment's good. Yeah, and they do their
interpretation of what they think made the first two one
or two installments good, and it ends up coming across
like a bad tone deaf cover, which is the best
app description I can give you of The Naked Gun
thirty three and the third. So that one comes out

(43:28):
in nineteen ninety four. I am a senior in high school.
This one was directed by Peter Sigal. You may know
Peter Sigal from the following movies that he directed. He
directed this This is actually his first directorial debut, but
he directed Tommy Boy. He directed Anger Management fifty First Dates.

(43:52):
He was the director and executive producer of Get Smart.
He directed and produced Grudge Match with de Niro and Stallone,
and he did the last. He did the first and
the second My Spy Movies with Dave Batista. And television,
He's directed episodes of The Jackie Thomas Show, a couple

(44:13):
episodes of Shameless, a couple episodes of Survivor's Remorse, an
episode of A g Tribeca, and Oh. He directed episode
seven episodes of the show Heals, which myself, Ronnie and
Jesse bothw.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
So you're saying he got better yeah, I don't think he.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
I don't think he's a bad director, given his credit.
I don't think he knew how to handle this, I
think and I think he was like, I have to
imitate instead of doing his own thing with it. I
think he was like, I have to imitate the Zuckers.
I don't think he's a good imitator. Is what happened here.
So this one was budgeted at thirty million and made money,
just didn't make as much money as the as the

(44:55):
previous one. So the budget goes up seven million dollars
and goes down sixty million dollars. It made one hundred
and thirty two. So and then they then they took
a break from this. That the world moved on. You know,
like I said, we're about to get We're about to
get the scary movies series or you know, epic movie
superhero movie, this movie, that movie.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Also, comedy is about to take a change that I
don't love the late nineties, early two thousands comedy. Two
things happen to kind of set the stage for why
this film is kind of like the last of a
dying breed for a while. One you get the gross
out comedy there's something about Mary Yeah, which I have

(45:36):
never seen because it's too gross for me, and I
can't hear.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
You're not missing anything.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
You will, you know, I see, God, you aren't. So
you get like the gross ubtuose comedy, you know, yeah, yeah,
that kind of everyone where every you know, the kind
of stuff that like Will Ferrell excels at screen, you know,
and Jim Carrey before him, where they don't know, they
wouldn't know subtlety if it kicked him in the face,
if everything is screaming at the camera and every joke

(46:03):
has to be broadcasted with a bullhorn. That's why I
kind of stop watching comedy for a while. The other
thing that's gonna happen is we're gonna move away from
sex and comedy to drugs in comedy. So now you're
gonna get your half baked, you get your how high,
You're gonna get your you know, American Pie sort of
like your transition, which is that as a franchise we're
gonna have to talk about one of these days. It

(46:24):
is the American Pie movies.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Ah Dan. And by the way, to anybody who's gonna
want to bitchet me for my thoughts on the first movie,
I look forward to ignoring your comments. So anyway, does
that age like milk?

Speaker 1 (46:37):
So I feel like part of what doesn't work for
The Naked Gun thirty three. And the third is it's
coming out as the time, as the world is changing
and moving away from this sort of thing. And this
gets by on the fact that the first two movies
were in their own right good despite our criticisms of them,
and so people were willing to give this one a flyer, like, no,
it hadn't turned anyone away just yet. It wasn't like

(46:59):
a Marvel movie or you know, anything like that. So
this one, it's a lot of the same jokes. Uh gosh,
I think the best I said, Priscilla Presley is actually
the best part of this movie. And this is so
Frank is retired and they and they bring him out

(47:20):
of retirement and it's causing strife with his marriage because
and this one hit home, you know her, Priscilla is
Presley's whole thing is like, you can't seem to choose
between being a cop and being with me, and you
keep choosing, you keep choosing being a cop, and I
get and I get, you know, I get what's left

(47:42):
of you, which isn't much, So stop being a cop
and give all your love to me. And he tries,
and then he gets dragged back in and she's like,
this is ridiculous, which made me have to explain Thelma
and Luis to my kids. That's fun, by the way,
that's always a fun time at the office. But that's
a lot of what this movie is. It's it's him
kind of dealing with It's a lot of marriage jokes.

(48:03):
Like it was like there was like an old married
with children's script lying around they repurposed into a naked
gun movie. What did you think of Naked Gun thirty three?
And third?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Oh my god, Well, there's no satire left. This is
no longer a satire of anything. This is where it
has just devolved down into just short of ninety minutes
of references and gross out humor. And that's why I say,
you can see exactly where scary movie came from. If

(48:35):
I'm to make a comedic comparison, I'm gonna take the
first movie and I'm gonna compare it to George Carlin
because it's a send up. It's witty, it's a little
bit it's a little bit smart in places, but it
knows what it's it knows what it's doing. It has
taken some time to actually look at the world around

(48:55):
it before it starts making fun of it.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
By the time we get to thirty three in a third,
we're about down to Dane Cook, We're about we're down
to fully back to what I call, Am I right?
Comedy women? Am I right?

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Right?

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Foreign cab drivers not English?

Speaker 1 (49:17):
M right?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Exact exactly? And what the fuck we even gotta throw
gotta throw in a trans joke with poor Anna Nicole
Smith of all people who let.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Me, I know you're gonna go on a tear and
I'm gonna give you that time. But I have to
cut in with this. So my daughter, who is very
pro lgbt q I, has her own autisms and you
know things, and she is she is quite the lefty,
which is creaty. I love that about her. She was
at a protest recently for the first time, kids baby's

(49:50):
first protest. So watching a very obtuse trans joke with
my very very queer daughter and she has to look
at me like, what the fuck? And I'm like, it's
a different time, and she was like, and she goes
to her credit to her ever loving credits why she's
just the greatest kid. She looked at me, She's like,

(50:12):
you know, Dad, I'm not upset they made the joke
because whatever it's this was a long time ago, in
a different world. I'm upset it was bent that way.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
It looked like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Why is that candy cane? Like that's not how that's
supposed to look. And then I was like, well, let
me let me explain it. She's like, I'd rather you didn't.
Now you can go on.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
What I was going to say about say about this
is you know, and and forgive me. It just comes
across as perhaps more chauvinistic as I need it to.
But I'm just speaking the truth here. Different errors of
Hollywood have had their own classic magnetic beauties that were

(50:56):
that were really icons, kind of standard bearers of their time.
Had your Marilyn Monroe's, your Jane Manfields, your rock Heel Welch's,
You're Jamie Lee Curtis, what have you? And you know,
there are a million beautiful women in Hollywood and in entertainment,

(51:19):
but not all of them have kind of a certain
magnetism about them that sucks people in. And speaking of
someone who grew up and came of age in Anna
Nicole Smith's prime. I will tell you when she referred
to as an it girl of her time, that's no exaggeration,
that's no faint praise. That really is kind of what

(51:40):
she was kind of at the moment before fame and
all its trappings really got its talents fully into her.
And in this she actually delivers kind of a surprisingly amusing, amusing,
fun performance, but it feels like that potential is really

(52:04):
wasted by a shoddy, by a shoddy script, where the
most ambitious they really get with her is her hypnotizing
a doorman by waggling her titty pasties at him and
then just walking away looking like she just smelled someone's
wet far. I still have no idea what the fuck

(52:25):
that joke was supposed to be, but that's really the
most they get out of her, And to call that
disappointing almost feels like it almost feels like an understatement.
For as much as this movie suffers for being just
as mean spirited, more gross, more fleetingly of its time,

(52:46):
and more devoid of really anything that's just bonafide, warm fun,
Like what's saying By this point, this doesn't even feel
like the same franchise. We're clearly into the era now
where when I watched this on Amazon, the first movies
that it recommended to me after this got done were
Loaded Weapon one and hot Shots. Sure for and credit

(53:12):
that credit in this case to Amazon for good reason,
because that would kind of be if if someone were
to ask me for an opinion on this, those would
probably be two of the first movies I would ask
him about, specifically hot Shots. I don't know what'd you
think of hot Shots? You liked it? Okay, enjoy because
it's going to be more of the same, except maybe

(53:34):
not quite as funny. And I never thought I would
be giving Charlie Sheen points over Leslie Nielsen. But here
the fuck we are one more for dragon Blood or
Tiger Blood or whatever, whatever the fuck kind of shit
he said he was drinking.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
I think I think we got it.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Look, I wanted to talk about the Naked Gun movies
because there were a trilogy that's out there. We never
talked about it before. And the fact that this weekend,
Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson the Oscar snubbed Pamela Anderson
are in the new Naked Gun sequel, requel, Legacies, whatever

(54:20):
it is, whatever is, Yeah, I mean, like the trailers
on it were really funny when they did the you know,
the little girl turn turning into him and he's still
wearing the same clothing. I laughed hard at that and
my kids hadn't really what the fuck moment, which was priceless,
and then the most recent one where he's doing the
p s A. You know, so please bring let's bring

(54:41):
comedy back to the theater, like, I'm all for that.
I would. I wish there were more choices in the
theater too. I mean Netflix sort of killed that, but
you know, maybe this will turn the tide either way.
I'm gonna go see I'm gonna make kids go see
it this weekend, which made worth this worth talking about.
I'm not sorry watch these I'm glad I got to
show them to my kids. Like my son asked me

(55:04):
all the time. He was like, why don't we watch
more comedies? I'm like, oh, they mostly suck, But he
was like, what about comedy from when you were a kid?
So I show so a little ways back. I showed
him three Amigos and he was like, I can see
why you think this is funny, all right, Jonas. So yeah, Well,
comedy is very subjective, So it is.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
It's very subjective, and there is, in all fairness, even
when a comedy is bad bio standards, I have to admit,
there is, I think, a deeply understated art to consistently
being able to make people laugh, especially when you can

(55:45):
do it across a massive swath of demographics. As much
as I have my taste in comics, I will say
that probably the one that I respect the most, probably
to the surprise of some people, is probably Gabriella Glecia's
because he can irritate me sometimes with how fence sitting
he can be on he can be on some subjects.

(56:07):
But I have to give Fluffy his due. He is
a man who manages to earn respect kind of everywhere
he goes by finding a way to warmly bring people together. Yeah,
and for this muchet, that's that's no small thing that
he's doing, especially in this dye.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Gonna say the world the last thing I said, the
world is a very different place from one poles to
the next. And and but but but everywhere you go,
everyone loves Fluffy. It's it's one of those things like
that that's oh yeah, yeah, Judger of the culture. All right.
So a week ago, there we go Sunday. Starting Sunday,
myself and Jesse did a triple feature Youth in Trouble.

(56:49):
We did Bad Boys nineteen eighty three, The Basketball Diaries
and I'm not going to do them all. Thing and
over the Edge. Like Monday, myself Alexisan Robert review Fantastic Four.
Alexis and David Wright reviewed K Pop demon Hunter, which
is all the rage. Last night, myself and Harry Broadhurst
spent about a half an hour discussing the good, the bad,

(57:11):
and the ugly of Terry Bowlier and a character that
he played that I don't know if you know this
or not. He played a little character and a off
Broadway show called WrestleMania. The name is Hulk Cogan. So
we spent time discussing that. We talked about SummerSlam coming
up this weekend, and then we looked at an indie show,
Scenic City Invitational. No show this weekend. I got, you know, SummerSlam,

(57:33):
and I'd rather do that than do a show next week.
We've got The Naked Gun review. On Monday. Tuesday, a
double shot of Damn You Hollywood. This will be Alexis, Jason,
and I believe Robert. They're gonna be reviewing together. I
will not be there, but I will be with Alexis.
On Wednesday, we'll be reviewing the second season I believe,

(57:55):
of Monsters, the Lylent Eric Menendez story. And then a
week from tonight we will be back on the Long
Road to n but I will have a different passenger,
that is Robert Winfrey, and we will be talking twenty
eight days, weeks and years later. So twenty eight years
later is just now. I believe it's a Tuesday on PVOD,

(58:17):
so you can go check that out if you didn't
see the movies. But we're gonna be looking at the
entire trilogy. I promised. Robert was like, we really should
have talked about this. I'm be patient. I have plans.
So that's what we're doing there. And that is it,
Sean tell us where you twitch and shout thank you.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Brett tamer in Chief. It is now just about a
minute past nine pm Central time. In two hours as
eleven pm Central time, I will be live on the
address you see underneath my very average ass looking mug.
Yes I know I look like an underwhelming Kelsey. I

(58:55):
can't really do anything about that.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
It's a just past mid season in Overwatch too, we
have some more grinding that we have to do to
get the match at our competitive rank and also get
ready for drives coming up in a few weeks. And
also Baby wants some loop boxes and a finished battle pass.
So for a few hours until I have to take
Ann to work at four in the morning, I am

(59:19):
going to be playing some Overwatch. So come by, say hi,
Please follow and subscribe if you can. I'm trying. We're
trying to save up for a house, so help.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
All right, Sean, thank you for joining.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Me here, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Yep, And the next time you will see Sean. Oh
boy ruh, when are you back? Oh, you'll be back
at the end of the month. We're going to be
looking at you. It'll be you, me and Shaye Tate.
We will be looking at the Toxic Avenger movies, assuming
I can find them.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
It's gonna be fun.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Yeah, I've never seen them. So there's a new one.
There's a new Toxic Avenger movie coming out. You know,
take a drink every time I say that there's a
new there's a new thing coming out, so we're looking
at the old thing. It's kind of what we do here,
so I figured now it is a great time to
look at the old toxic Avenger movies, assuming they're out anywhere.
Who is this best fewers? Oh? Okay, god damn it. Well, folks,

(01:00:22):
I almost read the spammy comment out loud. Yeah, it's
time to go. You will be safe and

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Long Road to Ruin: The Naked Gun Trilogy

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