Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994)

Given the huge success of the first two, I suppose the trilogy was bound to happen - but by now the joke and the characterisations had really worn very thin indeed. "Drebin" (Leslie Nielsen) is now happily (?) retired and living with his long-suffering wife "Jane" (Priscilla Presley) when he is sought out by his erstwhile colleagues "Ed" (George Kennedy) and "Nordberg" (OJ Simpson) to help out on their most dangerous case yet. Nope, the Queen is not making another state visit - it's "Rocco" (Fred Ward) and it looks like he wants to save Chris Rock any future embarrassment by blowing up the Oscars ceremony. What now ensues is a by now routine sequence of frying pan to fire scenarios, straight out of a Laurel & Hardy film. Sadly, that humour is all a bit passé now and though an appearance by Anna Nicole Smith must have given every budding actress from Tallahassee to Timbuktu a sense of hope that if she can make it, they can - the rest of it falls pretty flat! It is well enough made, the quips are quickly delivered and some of them still raise the odd smile. In the main, though, it is 80 minutes that almost looks like out-takes from the first two films with a thinly constructed plot by way of a template to hold it all together. It is watchable, but just not a patch on the earlier iterations.