Spoof comedy is incredibly hard to get right in large part because one must be incredibly smart to write it.  It sounds counterintuitive, but some of the dumbest jokes you can think of require razor-sharp instincts and wit, and those things don’t grow on trees.  It’s not just that fart jokes require excellent timing; Wordplay needs to be clever but feel organic. Sight gags take a ton of planning, and need someone who is willing to deliver all of that and look ridiculous doing it.  

Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker were the undisputed masters of this form.  In the 1980s, they made three spoof masterpieces: Airplane!, Top Secret! And The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! They combined the lowest common denominator with stunning wordplay, clever sight gags, and a love of exclaimation points.  They had recurring jokes that could make you laugh each time, even when repeated nearly verbatim, and this balance is so well maintained that these movies remain incredibly funny (if a little dated) to this day.  They also cast dramatic actors to deliver ridiculous lines completely deadpan, and changed the direction of Leslie Nielsen’s career entirely.  

With legacy sequels and existing IP being so popular today, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to recapture that magic. Luckily for us, after three decades of pale imitations, producer Seth McFarlane and director Akiva Schaffer have delivered the goods with The Naked Gun, a ridiculous spoof comedy that is as smart as it is dumb, and stars a dramatic actor to deliver ridiculous lines completely deadpan. This new The Naked Gun isn’t just a good spoof comedy, it’s a great one. 

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