The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie Review

"I Love It!" (The Film, Not the Blu-ray)

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 8, 2015

Has there ever been a career transformation to rival that of actor Leslie Nielsen? He spent the first half of his career playing serious dramatic parts (e.g., the stalwart Commander Adams in Forbidden Planet), but then flipped over into comedic roles where no joke was too silly or childish. He starred in so many film parodies that critic Roger Ebert affectionately dubbed him "the Laurence Olivier of spoofs".

According to Nielsen, he always wanted to do comedy but was afraid to try. Credit for spotting the clown inside the handsome leading man goes to the team commonly known as "ZAZ", for Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, the creators of 1980's Airplane!, where Nielsen's Dr. Rumack memorably delivered dire pronouncements and absurd non sequiturs with equal gravity. ("Don't call me 'Shirley'" is among the film's most frequently quoted lines.) Unwilling to let a good opportunity slip past them, ZAZ created for Nielsen the role of Police Sergeant (or maybe Lieutenant; no one knows for sure) Frank Drebin, who proceeded to careen through three films and a TV series, leaving a trail of destruction, a lot of dead bad guys and a few solved cases in his wake.

Paramount released the first of these films, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, on Blu-ray in 2011, porting over the special features previously included on DVD. Two years later, it released the two sequels in the U.K. and elsewhere, but in barebones editions stripped of their special features. After a three-year delay, the studio is now releasing the sequels on Blu-ray in the U.S. through its distribution deal with Warner, but the discs are identical to the region-free editions previously released abroad. If you have already imported the U.K. discs, there is no reason to replace them. If you have been eagerly awaiting a domestic release, there's no rush. Hold out for a bargain.

Several years have passed since Frank Drebin (Nielsen) foiled an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II during a state visit to L.A. At the moment, Drebin has traveled to Washington, D.C., to receive an award from the first President Bush (John Roarke) for his efforts in the war against drugs. First Lady Barbara Bush (Margery Ross) suffers the brunt of Drebin's legendary clumsiness, although other victims are legion.

Whom should Drebin encounter in D.C. but his former love, Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley)? Now an advocate for clean energy, Jane works for Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer (Richard Griffiths), the scientist to whom the President has entrusted the nation's future energy policy. This development doesn't sit well with a consortium of leaders from the coal, petroleum and nuclear industries, who conspire under the leadership of entrepreneur Quentin Hapsburg (Robert Goulet) to replace Dr. Meinheimer with an impostor, Earl Hacker (also played by Griffiths), who will recommend an industry-friendly energy policy to the nation. Hapsburg just happens to be Jane's current boyfriend. When she's not with Frank, Jane always seems to attract bad guys. (Make of that what you will.)

Hapsburg retains the services of a cold-blooded assassin named Hector Savage (Anthony James, parodying his henchman typecasting), while Drebin has his usual sidekicks, Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg, the human punching bag, whose presence acquired a newly ironic overlay after these films were made, because he's played by the now infamous O.J. Simpson. As always, though, Drebin's greatest strength is his utter cluelessness. He rarely feels fear, because he usually doesn't know what's going on around him. It's not as easy as it looks. "Doing nothing is very hard to do", Nielsen once said. "You never know when you're finished."

One of the reasons why Airplane! works so well is that ZAZ used the basic plot (borrowed from the 1957 film Zero Hour!) as a frame on which to hang an endless series of comic digressions, punchlines, parodies, double-entendres, digressions, skits, sight gags and pratfalls. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear operates on the same principle, with director and co-writer David Zucker gleefully pausing at one moment for a long (and hilarious) takedown of the pottery throwing sequence from his brother's successful romance, Ghost ; at another he dwells on the intricately suicidal decor of the Blue Note café where Drebin sits drowning his sorrows. As is often the case when ZAZ are at their best, jokes collide and overlap, so that if one doesn't score, another is already in progress. There's almost always enough happening in the frame that multiple viewings reveal gags overlooked on a first encounter. Some of the topical bits have faded into memory (I doubt anyone recalls Zsa Zsa Gabor's 1989 run-in with a Beverly Hills cop), but most of the jokes still land firmly.

The first Naked Gun will always be the best in the series, but The Smell of Fear runs a close second, largely because we have seen so many poorly executed spoofs since then (some of them from ZAZ, and even some starring Nielsen) that confirm how difficult it is to do these things as well as ZAZ did when they were working at the top of their game.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

After taking so long to bring The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear to Blu-ray in the U.S., Paramount could at least have done a new transfer—but no. The 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray being distributed by Warner but mastered by Paramount is identical to the disc that Paramount previously released overseas, and the transfer of cinematographer Robert M. Stevens' (The Man Who Knew Too Little) photography is dated and mediocre, though not entirely unwatchable, especially on smaller screens. The instability of the opening credits is one of many signs that the transfer is far from fresh, as is the lack of sharpness, weak detail (especially noticeable in long shots) and often poorly resolved grain structure. I have read numerous comments on the Blu-ray.com forum complaining that this presentation suffers from "DNR", but I saw no indication of any form of noise reduction—indeed, the opposite. No effort of any kind has been made to improve this image for the demands of contemporary playback hardware, which will quickly reveal when a transfer is second-rate. Given the limitations of the original image capture, it's not clear whether any form of digital "massage" could have improved on the final product, but Paramount hasn't even tried. They've just re-pressed the disc and shipped it to market.

Ironically enough, this 85-minute film has been placed on a BD-50 and mastered with an average bitrate of 34.98 Mbps. It hardly matters, though. Garbage in, garbage out.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The news on the audio front is more encouraging. The Smell of Fear was released in Dolby Stereo, and the track was remixed in 5.1 by Paramount for its 2000 DVD release. That remix appears on the Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, and the improved dynamic range and more open sense of space adds to the fun of the movie, which uses all manner of exaggerated sounds and overdubbed voices to enhance jokes (and sometimes to create whole new ones). The gunfire in a SWAT team standoff is suitably loud, as are various collisions, catastrophes and casualties too numerous to mention. (The credit sequence alone, with the camera following Police Squad's flashing red light through one incongruous scene after another, is a study in disruptive sound editing.) In addition to Ira Newborn's reliably jazzy score, the soundtrack includes standards such as "Tangerine" (for a dance sequence), "Satin Doll", the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" (for the Ghost parody) and one of the most unique renditions ever recorded of "Bésame Mucho".

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Paramount's 2000 DVD of The Naked Gun 2½ included a commentary with director David Zucker and producer Robert Weiss, hosted by Peter Tilden, plus two theatrical trailers. None of these extras have been included on the Blu-ray.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Smell of Fear is a funny movie but an indifferent Blu-ray. Will Paramount revisit it any time soon? I doubt it, but one never knows. As I said at the outset, buy this only at a low price—and keep your DVD for the extras.