Avis Metacritic

Only one filmmaking team should be allowed to make sequels: The Naked Gun people. In Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, they reach maximum velocity immediately. Naked 3 sets such a great pace at the beginning, it can't possibly keep up. Inevitably, the movie has its slower sections, coming almost to a halt in a slapstick finale at the Oscars. But wherever you are in the story, there's always something funny coming at you.

It occurred to me, watching the film, that what Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley do here is not easy, and is done well. It would be fatal to the movie if either one ever betrayed the slightest suggestion that they know funny things are going on. They play everything on a level of seriousness that would be appropriate, say, for a 1960s TV cop drama. Their timing is impeccable. And they provide the sure, strong center around which the madness revolves.

Naked Gun 33 1/3 has a sluggish, one-gag-at-a- time rhythm, and it aims at too many soft targets. Aside from the Oscar sequence, the movie’s big satirical coup is a send-up of prison-escape pictures (yawn).

This third installment of the silly and often hilarious send-up of cop cliches is slower to start than the earlier Naked Gun movies. As always, it is a scattershot mix of throwaway lines, topical references and sight gags (a newspaper headline that reads: Dyslexia for Cure Found).

David Zucker and Segal seem to thrive on the formulaic tomfoolery that propels these rapid-fire spoofs. Naked Gun 33 1/3, as pointlessly plotted as ever, manages to be not only still funny but energetically slapped together and occasionally inventive.

Some of the gags are side-splitters, some just sit on the screen. But the film would have to be a great deal worse to prevent Naked Gun die-hards from lining up. [18 Mar 1994, p.F6]

There's a little less hilarity in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult than in the first two films, but there's still enough slapstick firepower to put it across. There's efficiency in Peter Segal's direction, but never real zaniness, and in the gaps between the sight gags lurks the onset of sequelitis. [18 Mar 1994, p.68]

Loaded with the usual barrage of irreverent, politically incorrect and virtually non-stop gags. Director Peter Segal and writers Pat Proft, David Zucker and Robert LoCash succumb to occasional bouts of toilet humor, but there’s also some extended hilarity in a scene set around the Academy Awards.

Of the Naked Gun films, 33 1/3 is the most successful in capturing the breakneck genre parody that marked the short-lived but critically acclaimed Police Squad TV series (which won Nielsen his only Emmy). Taking broad pot shots at everything from Thelma & Louise to The Crying Game, and culminating with a breathless swipe at the sacred cow of the movie industry, the Academy Awards.

Let's just say if you liked the last one, you'll like this one, too. Otherwise, you'll discover that it's time for Drebin, Nordberg, Capt. Hocken, and the rest to finally retire their badges.