Among its other attributes, the 1980 movie “Airplane!” was responsible for a pioneering pop-culture discovery: that non-comic actors playing it straight in a comedy could be insanely funny. Leslie Nielsen – up until then known as a stone-faced dramatic actor – was the prime beneficiary, parlaying his “Airplane!” turn as Dr. Rumack (“Don’t call me Shirley”) into an entire second career as a deadpan farceur in TV’s “Police Squad!” and three “Naked Gun” movie spin-offs.
Those projects were spoofs of 1970s police shows goosed with Mad Magazine sight gags and “Pink Panther”-style slapstick – all cultural references that are sadly out of date in 2025. Do we need a belated third sequel to “The Naked Gun,” then, or is this it just a case of nostalgia squared? Regardless, we’ve got one, and it’s e