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Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

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Released 10-Aug-2001

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Comedy Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1, 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 (2:04)
Audio Commentary-D Zucker (Prod),R Weiss (Prod),P Segal (Dir) et al
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 1994
Running Time 79:10 (Case: 82)
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (60:30) Cast & Crew
Start Up Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding 4 Directed By Peter Segal
Studio
Distributor

Paramount Home Entertainment
Starring Leslie Nielsen
Priscilla Presley
George Kennedy
O.J. Simpson
Fred Ward
Case Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI $39.95 Music Ira Newborn


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles Greek
English
Spanish
French
Hebrew
Italian
Portuguese
English Audio Commentary
Spanish Audio Commentary
French Audio Commentary
Italian Audio Commentary
Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

   And we come to the third instalment of The Naked Gun series, the rather aptly named The Final Insult. Why apt? Well, it is a very rare family of films that gets to the third episode and does not stink horrendously. Arguably the only few trilogies where I can honestly say I enjoyed the final episode as much as the first is that collection from some bloke called George Lucas, the Back To The Future trilogy and The Indiana Jones trilogy. Sadly, The Final Insult is definitely the weakest film of The Naked Gun trilogy, and probably for no more reason than the fact that it concentrates rather heavily on the mammaries of a certain female by the name of Anna Nicole Smith. Still, I suppose it is something of a miracle that a six episode television show that was very quickly canned managed to become a trilogy of rather successful feature films.

   The loose framework of a plot that the film hangs on is a continuation of the loose framework used in the previous instalment in the trilogy, The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell Of Fear. Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) and Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) have now married and Frank has retired from Police Squad. Jane is now a lawyer whilst Frank is a househusband. Things might seem to be rosy except that Jane has a hankering for kids and Frank is not so convinced of the need. They were seeing a psychiatrist who committed suicide, and are close to driving their new one to insanity on their first visit. But once a cop, always a cop and Frank receives a visit from his former bumbling Police Squad colleagues Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O. J. Simpson). They have a little problem and the only lead is a woman known as Tanya Peters (Anna Nicole Smith), a name from the past that Frank vaguely recalls from a case in the seventies. Ed and Nordberg convince Frank to head to The Karlson Clinic to track down the address of Tanya. Nobody bothers to tell Frank that this is no ordinary clinic...

   The story continues with Jane leaving Frank over his lack of performance and Frank going undercover to find a mad bomber. Going undercover means heading for Statesville prison where he shares a cell with one Rocco Dillon (Fred Ward), boyfriend of Tanya and the contracted bomber for the most stunning terrorist act in America. Frank ingratiates himself into Rocco's good books and partakes in the dirty deed. Naturally, Frank succeeds in his task but equally naturally does so with as much mayhem as one man can possibly inflict upon the poor unsuspecting city of Los Angeles.

   Since we are talking about the third episode of the trilogy, the gags don't quite pile upon each other as they did in the earlier episodes and are slightly more obvious and less subtle. The main films that are in the sights of the wacky writing gang this time around are The Untouchables, Thelma and Louise and The Great Escape. The whole film is really a lot more forced than the earlier episodes and when those patches threatened to sink the film, the writers inserted the obligatory shots of the mammaries of the piddlingly unendowed Anna Nicole Smith. She might have a fairly well-known pair, but that is about the extent of her acting abilities. Unfortunately, not even frequent shots of her in partially revealing clothing is enough to sustain the interest here though. At least we still have the talents of Leslie Nielsen who continues to show his supreme ability to do the most idiotic things and keep the straightest face possible. Given the serious lack of really good quality material here, his abilities are really stretched to the limit. Mind you, the sight of him in seventies mode is almost worth the price of admission alone. The rest of the cast do the usual stuff with their usual degree of competency. Mind you, it never ceases to amaze me how far down the gurgler the career of Fred Ward went after making The Right Stuff.

   If The Naked Gun is to your taste in film, then there is every chance you will enjoy Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. However, it is by no means the brightest point in the trilogy and is perhaps not the wisest choice for sampling the delights of the series. Still, if you like large mammaries...

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio 1.78:1, being just a slight matting of the original 1.85:1 theatrical release, and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    Whilst an improvement upon the previous instalment in the trilogy, the transfer still falls somewhat short of perfection. It is in just the little things that this shows but the result is ever-so-slightly and very marginally disappointing. Nonetheless, this is a quite sharp and detailed transfer that should satisfy all but the most finicky of us. The transfer is really very consistent though, which aids the situation an awful lot. Shadow detail is good and the transfer is clear throughout. There is no grain issue in the transfer. There did not appear to be any low level noise problems in the transfer.

    The colours are very nicely handled, very nicely saturated and quite vibrant. The transfer looks very natural and really there is nothing here that I would really find objectionable at all. There is no indication of oversaturation in the transfer, not any indication of any colour bleed.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer, apart from what seems to be the obligatory slight loss of resolution in pan shots (check out 1:48 and 2:52). There were very few problems with film-to-video artefacts in the transfer, with just a few odd instances of aliasing to spoil an otherwise nice transfer. The most noticeable examples are at 32:28 in the church steeple and 49:39 in the rather poorly-handled helicopter effects. There were a few film artefacts floating around in the transfer, but nothing was especially noticeable.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming at 60:30. It is pretty much mid-scene, and as a result is just a bit noticeable although not really disruptive to the film.

    There is a fair range of subtitle options on the DVD, and I checked out the English ones. At least, I think they were the English ones, but there was sufficient wordage missing as to cast doubts! I would rate these as only being about 65% accurate and some of the missing words are rather important to the flow of what is going on. On the positive side, the subtitles are nice and sharp and really easy to read.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are five soundtracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack, a French Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack, an Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtrack and an English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. I listened to the English and English Audio Commentary soundtracks.

    The dialogue comes up very well in the transfer and there are no problems with the clarity and ease of understanding. There are no problems with audio sync in the transfer.

    The music score again comes from Ira Newborn and is a nicely complimentary soundtrack, remarkably consistent with the other episodes in the series and therefore not really distinctive.

    And just to keep the consistency going, there is once again not really that much to say about the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, for once again there are no specific notes in my note book. It is not an especially memorable effort though and the surround channel use, especially the rear channels, is not terrific but provides a decent enough presence. The bass channel doesn't get much in the way of action but does enough to make its presence felt when really needed. It is a less bassy effort than in the previous release from the trilogy. It is pretty much free from distortion or other blemishes.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    Paramount are nothing but consistent in the general lack of serious quality extras packages. This is another example of another somewhat underwhelming effort.

Menu

    Again nothing much special in this area, being themed in accord with the cover/poster for the film, but at least they are 16x9 enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer (2:04)

    Another trailer that gives away a little too much about the film, although heavily based upon the bits starring Anna Nicole Smith (funny that...). It is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, it is 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The technical quality is rather good.

Audio Commentary - David Zucker (Producer), Robert Weiss (Producer), Peter Segal (Director) and Michael Ewing (Associate Producer)

    In keeping with the previous effort in the series, this is punctuated with a fair bit of silence and is seriously lacking in any really interesting background information. Most of what we get here falls into pointing out various friends and family making their cameos and pointing out ADRs done by the participants. However, the general feeling here suits the film well enough and in many respects the film moves along at a faster pace when listening to the commentary than it does when watching the film normally.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    This is identical to the Region 1 release in most respects. A direct comparison between the Region 1 and Region 4 releases indicates that there is once again not a huge amount of difference between the two. In fact, in most respects I would have difficulty really telling the difference between the two. Obviously the Region 1 is a little less smooth in the picture thanks to NTSC formatting, and it is also ever-so-slightly darker in the transfer, but really I would have to say that there is no real difference between the two versions.

Summary

    Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult rounds off the trilogy in much the same manner as most third instalments - to the slight detriment of the whole package. Still, it is by no means the worst spoof that I have ever seen, and even though the concentration on Anna Nicole Smith's chest gets a bit too much on occasions (pun intended), there is still enough here to chuckle about. The film has been given arguably the best transfer of the three films in the trilogy.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (Biological imperfection run amok)
Thursday, August 30, 2001
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-515, using S-Video output
DisplaySony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-795
SpeakersEnergy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL

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