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My Review of "The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear"

This sequel is quite similar to the first movie but that isn't a bad thing.

By Brian AnonymousPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear came out back in 1991. That's just 3 years after the original movie. I guess people are always worried when they make sequels to movies especially comedies. Hollywood doesn't have a really good track record with comedy specials but this one can be an exception. It carries much of the same sort of humor that we've seen in the first and adds a little twist for good measure.

This movie starts out not too long after the first movie. Frank is still shockingly in Police Squad and continues to get invited to dignitary dinners. This time he's invited to meet with the president of the United States who was George H. Bush at the time. They are all there to introduce all the leaders in the energy industry.

There are a ton of sight gags with the first lady Barbara Bush. Frank continues to make her life a living hell without her knowing. Then again Frank is unknowingly a nuisance to everyone in the movie. This movie really knows how to pick on people and have us in on the joke. Again a lot of the humor in this movie would never fly in today's day in age. We still see a lot of elements of the old school comedy writing from the first movie.

I have to admit this movie is more about the sight gags than it is about the incredibly fun dialogue that they had in the first movie. This movie does still have some good banter but nothing like the first one that had me howling in laughter.

The main premise of the movie is actually a little more intelligent and interesting. The oil industry leader, Quentin, so happens to be the new beau of Franks old flame Jane. To make matters worse Quentin has been scheming against cleaner energy industries so that oil will remain the main source of the world's energy. I thought this was quite interesting because this movie came out back in 1991. That's 29 years ago and they were talking about electric cars, solar panels and insulated windows. Stuff that we had all this time but never implemented possibly because industries like the oil industry helped lobby against.

A story like that seems a little deeper than what we would expect an early 90's comedy movie to be talking about. I remember the world was just getting world healing at the time so it only took us 30 years to start really paying attention.

This movie continues with much of the slapstick antics that they did in the past. I feel that they relied on a lot of potty humor more so in this movie than the previous movie. I also felt that this movie wasn't quite as good as the first. I miss the fun conversations that they had in the first movie. Still the visual humor in this movie were done quite well.

Again there are quite a lot of things in this movie that will make people cringe to watch such as the appearance of actual animals in the movie. We don't really see this stuff in movies nowadays especially since we have CGI to take care of these scenes but this was back in 1991 and technology really wasn't there at the time.

I watched this with some of my older friends and they agreed with me that they really don't make movies like this anymore and they miss this type of humor. The funny thing is that they haven't seen this movie in years so they got more out of the movie now that they're older. Then again they still missed some of the pop culture references such as Pat Buchanan and Mel Tormé. I started realizing that they did have a ton of 90's references that only certain people would even understand anymore. Maybe people won't understand some of the humor because of this. My friends still found the movie pretty hilarious and were belly laughing just as I was while watching the movie.

Again Leslie Nielsen was amazing as Frank. He was a comedic genius with his timing and dead pan reactions. How can someone tell so much about a story by just looking at the screen? It's kind of mind boggling how much of a great communicator he was back in the day.

This movie was trying to communicate to the audience that we all have to have a little bit of fun sometimes. Just shut off your brain and enjoy and that's what we did while watching this movie. I really enjoyed it even though the movie was quite similar to the first movie in regards to the formula in which it derives from.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie as well. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first movie but still enjoyable nonetheless. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. It is definitely for someone from the 90's to re-watch as they would recognize the pop culture references in the movie. Kids nowadays might not totally enjoy it but then again I'm not sure. For me it was a great time from the beginning to end.

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About the Creator

Brian Anonymous

I have tons of opinions that change constantly. I watch a lot of movies and play video games. There are some articles on my struggles with languages and dance as well.

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