Capital Celluloid - Day 356: Monday Dec 26

The Naked Gun (Zucker, 1988) & Airplane! (Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker, 1980) double-bill:
Prince Charles Cinema, 7pm & 8.50pm 
 
Time Out review of The Naked Gun:

'Fans of the Airplane team (and especially of their short-lived TV series Police Squad, by which this gloriously tacky spoof cop-thriller is inspired) will know that corny old gags, hoary clichés, and downright silliness can, if delivered in the right spirit, provide far more fun than any amount of Merchant-Ivory bons mots or Woody Allen witticisms. As ever, sophistication is conspicuously absent as tactless, dim-witted Lt Frank Drebin (Nielsen) investigates the shooting of a cop during a ludicrously audacious drugs bust. One hesitates even to attempt a synopsis of the admirably perfunctory plot, other than that suspects include a delirously plastic Priscilla Presley and a magnificently corseted Montalban. Ineptitude rules throughout. Finally, though, it's Nielsen's show: with an unaccountable flair for the needlessly dramatic, he holds the entire shambling absurdity together by treating everything as if it were a matter of life or death. The endlessly tasteless juvenilia should make you ashamed of laughing yourself into a stupor.'Geoff Andrew

Here is the trailer

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Time Out review of Airplane!:

'Zapping every disaster movie cliché with the cartoon subtlety of Mad magazine may be nothing more than cannibal glee, but it prompts enough convulsions of laughter in this wacky spoof from the Kentucky Fried Movie team for you not to notice their dead hand at work. Imagine the same old '50s airplane yarn: pilots poisoned, passengers panic, while a traumatised war-hero lands the jalopy. It should be disastrous. But psycho ground controllers (Stack and Bridges), laff-a-second pace, and bludgeoning innuendo make this the acceptable face of the locker-room satire.'Don McPherson

Here is the trailer

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