6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Frank Drebin comes out of retirement to help Police Squad infiltrate a gang of terrorists planning to detonate a bomb at the Academy Awards.
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson, Fred WardComedy | 100% |
Crime | 12% |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish=Latin (mono) & Castillian (stereo)
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The third film in the Naked Gun trilogy—full title: Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult—was
released on March 18, 1994, which turned out to be just in time. Only three months later, the
public image of series regular O.J. Simpson was permanently redefined by a nationally televised
police pursuit in a white Ford Bronco SUV, followed by the century's most minutely scrutinized
trial for the bloody murder of his wife and her friend. Ten days after Simpson was apprehended,
The Final Insult's femme fatale, former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith, made her own
headlines by marrying an oil billionaire sixty-three years her senior. Litigation over Smith's
claim to the tycoon's estate dragged on for years, even after Smith's untimely death in 2007 from
a drug overdose. For all the tragic elements in these two celebrity stories, the absurdity of the
media frenzy generated by both makes the final chapter of The Naked Gun trilogy look tame by
comparison.
Not every production from the comedy shop of ZAZ (for "Zucker / Abrahams / Zucker") is a gem,
and The Final Insult is much weaker than its two predecessors in the Naked Gun series. Co-written
by David Zucker and
Pat Proft, both veterans of the earlier films, and Robert LoCash
(BASEketball), the film was the directing debut
of Peter Segal, who
would go on to make Anger
Management and Get
Smart. Where the
script gives him room, Segal shows that he can stage a
complex routine and manage physical comedy with the best of them, but The Final Insult doesn't
allow him enough opportunities to do so. Signs of creative exhaustion are everywhere.
As with The
Naked Gun 2½, Paramount is releasing The Final Insult on Blu-ray without the
extras that accompanied the film on DVD. The disc is identical to the region-free version
released overseas several years ago, and it isn't worth rushing to acquire.
As with the Blu-ray of The Naked Gun 2½, Paramount has simply re-pressed the disc previously released overseas several years ago in a region- free edition. Shot by returning cinematographer Robert M. Stevens, Naked Gun 33⅓ fares somewhat better on Blu-ray, despite being mastered from a dated transfer, presumably because that transfer was of better quality to begin with. The opening credits still reveal noticeable shakiness, but image detail is superior throughout, so that figures in long shots do not fade into indistinctness. Sharpness is much improved overall, and the grain structure is more finely resolved. Colors are also more vibrant, although much of this is attributable to the production design and costumes in such sequences as the Seventies flashback and the extended Academy Awards sequence; the prison scenes, by contrast, are a sea of blue, gray and white. No signs of untoward digital manipulation in the form of high-frequency filtering or electronic sharpening were evident. Paramount has mastered the 83-minute film on a BD-50 with the same average bitrate of 34.94 Mbps as the The Naked Gun 2½.
The sound mix is one of The Final Insult's strongest elements. Although the film was released to theaters in Dolby Surround, multi-channel mixes were becoming common by 1994, and I suspect the sound designers knew that their mix would likely be redone in the near future for a 5.1 presentation, as Paramount did for the film's 2000 DVD release. That mix has been included here in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it doesn't sound like a remix. From the opening sequence in the train station, with voices and bullets placed throughout the sound field, through the crowded prison sequences and the elaborate Oscar scenes that move from the audience to the stage to backstage, the soundtrack provides an immersive experience with plenty of atmosphere and directional cues from left and right. Ira Newborn's scoring is as good as ever, and the soundtrack includes the usual selection of comically appropriate cues, including "Hip to Be Square" by Huey Lewis and the News and "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. And who could forget Pia Zadora's rendition of "This Could Be the Start of Something"? It may be her greatest performance.
Paramount's 2000 DVD of Naked Gun 33⅓ featured a commentary with producers David Zucker and Robert Weiss, director Peter Segal and associate producer Michael Ewing, plus a theatrical trailer. None of these extras have been included on the Blu-ray.
The Final Insult was financially successful, but it made less at the box office than either of the
two previous Naked Gun movies. David Zucker and Pat Proft are supposed to have sketched out
a fourth film, but then they turned their attention to the Scary
Movie franchise, in which Leslie
Nielsen twice appeared as President Harris. If The Final Insult is any indication, the franchise
was exhausted, but it would have been interesting to see how they might have dealt with the
absence of O.J. Simpson's Nordberg. How daringly would ZAZ have crossed the boundaries of
good taste on that radioactive subject? We'll never know. As for Paramount's "new" Blu-ray, it's
a decent presentation of the weakest movie in the trilogy, but one needs the 2000 DVD to
complete the package.
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35th Anniversary
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