DECEMBER 2nd - The Wisdom of Frank Drebin



There are plenty of funny movies out there. Most of the time they’ll give you a little chuckle and brighten your day for an hour or two before you mindlessly shuffle back into your day trying ignore the fact that your body is in a constant state of functioning decay. But every now and again a movie comes along that is so spit-out-your-drink funny, it becomes part of your make-up and reminds you how great life can be just through sheer joy and humor. Airplane! Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. Dumb and Dumber. There’s Something About Mary. Superbad. Well on this day in 1988, one such movie premiered. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Now I was too young to remember the very short TV Series, but that didn’t matter. Funny is funny, and you don’t need any backstory to crack up at Frank Drebin. So full of wisdom, that Drebin. I saw Naked Gun before Airplane! so it has a special place in my heart. It’s funny how that matters. For instance, because Rocky IV is the first Rocky I can remember seeing, I like it more than any other Rocky despite the fact it is a 90 minute movie and 30 minutes of it are flashbacks from Rocky I-III. Einstein should have done a relativity study of nostalgia and preference. Some things are simply better, or different enough that you can appreciate both. Like Whitney Houston’s remake of “I Will Always Love You.” You appreciate it for the powerhouse that it is, and it takes nothing away from the understated earnestness of Dolly’s original. But for others, it simply comes down to what you happened upon first. But I digress. Naked Gun spawned two sequels, and I loved all three movies. I could sit here and quote Frank's wisdom-filled lines till my fingers hurt, though the like-a-midget-at-a-urinal-I-was-going-to-have-to-stay-on-my-toes line was always my favorite--possibly because of my fascination with midgets, but most likely because it is hilariously clever, but instead of doing that, I want to just bask in the remembrance of really silly humor done exceptionally well. If you don’t laugh at the Drebin Umpire strike calls, you need to check your pulse. Or locate a better sense of humor. So to Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, and even O.J. Simpson, thanks for keeping me on my toes. And for making me laugh. Because that was the real wisdom of Frank Drebin.

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