Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult Blu-ray Movie Review

Sawdust and Mildew

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 8, 2015

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.

Married at last, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) and Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) have settled into their suburban home. Frank is adjusting to his retirement from Police Squad, while Jane works as prosecutor for the D.A.'s office, assisted by a junior attorney named Louise (Ellen Greene), whose admiration for Jane is considerable. (Pay attention to the name "Louise" and to the blue Thunderbird convertible she drives.) But all is not paradise in the Drebin household, as issues over starting a family divide the couple, leading them to seek couples counseling from Dr. Eisendrath (Earl Boen, who played the world's least competent shrink in the first three Terminator films).

Meanwhile, Police Squad receives word of a terrorist threat from a bomber-for-hire named Rocco (Fred Ward), who is able to work from prison courtesy of his beloved mother, Muriel (Kathleen Freeman), and his statuesque girlfriend, Tanya (Smith). The party seeking Rocco's services is a Middle Eastern businessman named Papshmir (Raye Birk), a returnee from the first Naked Gun, where he participated in the conspiracy to assassinate the Queen of England. Despite Frank Drebin's promise to Jane that he's severed all ties with Police Squad, he accedes to the request of Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and the still clueless Nordberg (Simpson) that he help them out, first by investigating Tanya, and then by entering prison undercover to learn the intended target of Rocco's bomb.

The single best sequence in The Final Insult occurs at the beginning and has nothing to do with Rocco or the bomb plot. It's a parody of the train station shootout from The Untouchables, in which every signature element of Brian De Palma's elaborate sequence gets dialed up to eleven (and then some). The scene was reportedly written for the first Naked Gun film, then cut because it was too expensive, and it retains the satirically absurdist wit that makes From the Files of Police Squad! a classic. Unfortunately, from that point onward, The Final Insult loses steam. As disorganized as they may seem on the surface, ZAZ's films require intricately structured timing, and as I noted in reviewing The Naked Gun 2½, the best ones use a basic plot as a frame to structure the comic chaos. The Final Insult keeps shifting among stories, especially in the slack middle section where it can't decide whether to focus on the bomb plot, Frank's dissatisfaction with retirement, or Jane's assorted misadventures. By the time the story elements re-coalesce for a third act at the Academy Awards (don't ask), skits that might have elicited belly laughs fall flat because they haven't been properly set up.

An even greater fault in The Final Result is the misuse of Leslie Nielsen's gift for deadpan delivery. His Frank Drebin has always been funniest when not reacting, but too many sketches in The Final Insult have him mugging, frowning, grimacing or, in one notable example, recoiling in horror and vomiting copiously at a "shocking" revelation. The last bit is true to the famous film being parodied, but it would have been truer to Drebin's character to have him make an incongruous observation, then walk away calmly. The more unflappable Drebin is, the funnier the Naked Gun movie.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

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.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.