Baseketball: The creators of South Park star in this movie (not written by them) that has them pioneering a professional league based on a driveway game that combines baseball and basketball and trying to psych out your opponent by hurling insults at them. I shouldn’t like it as much as I do because there’s a lot of flat and offensive jokes (David Zucker really likes torturing hospital patients). But there’s enough that had me rolling that I enjoyed myself. Easily my favorite cameo by Bob Costas.
Grade: C
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear: Not nearly as sharp or as memorable as the first movie in the series, but still with a bunch of laughs. Slapstick at its perfectly mediocre.
Grade: C+
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!: Brilliant slapstick starring Leslie Nielsen, playing the same obtuse character he did in the television show. Not too many wasted jokes here and a lot of memorable visuals as well. The Angels game where Nielsen manages to go undercover as the home plate umpire is classic. O.J. Simpson is pretty good in a supporting role.
Grade: B+
Airplane!: My favorite slapstick movie, I can pretty much watch this any time. Lampooning airplane disaster movies, but also with a solid stand-alone jokes that kill me. The funniest bits come from the supporting characters such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Florence Henderson, and Leslie Nielsen. Slapstick only works if each character seems to speaking every line in earnest, and the main characters (Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges) all do their jobs perfectly.
Grade: A-
Other David Zucker Films You May Have Seen
Top Secret!
Ruthless People
Scary Movie 3
Scary Movie 4
My Boss’s Daughter
An American Carol
The Naked Gun is way up there for me. I like Airplane! as well but that stupid guy in the control room who unplugs the power and does all that broad stuff…man, he sucks so hard that he’s the first thing I think about when I consider the movie.
I had no idea Zucker did the second and third Scary Movies. The second was so horrible – definitely a bottom five comedy I’ve ever seen – that I stopped dead.
Top Secret is okay, but seems more like someone trying to rip off Zucker than Zucker himself.
He did the third and fourth Scary Movies. Perhaps I didn’t label that clearly enough.