The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! follows the classic series with rapid-fire jokes, slapstick mayhem, and Leslie Nielsen’s iconic deadpan charm.

The ZAZ team—David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker—were at the peak of their powers in the 1980s. They first teamed up with Leslie Nielsen on Airplane!, proving that the veteran actor could deliver a masterclass in deadpan comedy. Whenever the trio collaborated, something magical seemed to happen, and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is no exception. Nearly every gag hits exactly as intended—at least, that’s been my impression after revisiting this classic more than once.

Police Squad’s most obliviously heroic lieutenant, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), returns from a disastrous overseas vacation just in time to get caught up in a bizarre plot involving drugs, hypnosis, and a planned assassination during Queen Elizabeth II’s (Jeannette Charles) visit to Los Angeles. After Det. Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) is seriously wounded while investigating a heroin smuggling operation linked to shady businessman Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban), Frank is assigned to crack the case—all while overseeing royal security under the watchful eye of his dependable partner, Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy)

As Frank investigates Ludwig and stumbles his way through increasingly ridiculous situations, he also finds himself falling for Ludwig’s assistant, Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), who is unaware of her boss’s criminal activities. Meanwhile, Ludwig secretly hatches a scheme with Pahpshmir (Raye Birk) to assassinate the Queen using a hypnotized pawn, controlled via a musical beeper. Frank’s attempts to stop the plot include a disastrous press event and a spectacularly clumsy infiltration of a baseball game where the assassination is set to take place.

Disguised as an umpire, Frank attempts to identify the brainwashed assassin—Reggie Jackson of the California Angels—before he can take the shot. Amid a cascade of slapstick chaos, including a bench-clearing brawl and a misfired tranquilizer, Frank inadvertently saves the Queen when a falling fan crushes Jackson seconds before he can pull the trigger.

In a final confrontation atop the stadium in The Naked Gun, Ludwig is eliminated in gloriously over-the-top fashion, and Jane—briefly hypnotized into turning on Frank—is saved by his heartfelt proposal. With the day (accidentally) saved and the Queen unharmed, Frank is hailed a hero…right before launching Nordberg, still recovering in a wheelchair, down a flight of stairs and onto the field in one last gag.

I could talk about Leslie Nielsen’s deadpan delivery, which remains a masterclass in absurdity through seriousness. Or how a Herman’s Hermits song comes out of nowhere in The Naked Gun—only to be framed like a music video on TV. Or maybe, just maybe, how O.J. Simpson is used for comic relief just a few years before his career came to a notorious end with a double murder. But instead, I’m going to talk about the baseball—because honestly, it’s one of the best parts.

We need to talk about the baseball scenes. For much of the first hour, there’s no indication that The Naked Gun’s final act will take place at a baseball game. You’d be forgiven for expecting a typical action-movie climax—a car chase or a shootout, maybe. But baseball? No one could have predicted that. And yet, it works. A baseball game is a major public event, which gives Lt. Frank Drebin the perfect opportunity to go undercover—not once, but twice—after knocking out both tenor Enrico Pallazzo (Tony Brafa) and the home plate umpire to steal their uniforms.

While The Naked Gun isn’t a baseball movie in the traditional sense, it features enough baseball action to qualify as baseball-adjacent. So how did we end up with a matchup between the California Angels and the Seattle Mariners? The filmmakers originally requested the Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins, but were turned down. The Los Angeles Dodgers allowed filming at Dodger Stadium but didn’t want their name or branding used. A bit of stock footage from Wrigley Field also appears. Since the story is set in L.A., the Angels ultimately made the most sense.

The baseball scenes in The Naked Gun resist the urge to rely on heavy dialogue and instead lean into physical comedy—sign-flashing, crotch-grabbing, spitting, and overzealous home plate cleaning. Drebin uses the chaos to frisk every batter and baserunner, unknowingly searching for the hypnotized assassin. That assassin, of course, turns out to be Reggie Jackson, assigned to kill Queen Elizabeth II during the seventh-inning stretch. Drebin stops him just in time and, after one more chaotic encounter, gets the girl.

If you’re going to climax with a baseball game, you need a top-tier broadcast team. While Paramount produced The Naked Gun, it didn’t hold MLB broadcast rights in the ’80s, so the production leaned on ABC and NBC talent instead. A few familiar ABC voices are joined by the semi-retired Curt Gowdy, who anchors a booth that includes Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Mel Allen, Dick Enberg, Dick Vitale, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

Palmer later reflected on the “ridiculous seven-person booth” in his memoir, but the result is hilarious—especially once chaos breaks out on the field. Gowdy and Palmer react with near-tragic solemnity to The Naked Gun’s absurd finale, while Enberg delivers priceless reaction shots during a decapitation gag. While the booth is crowded, it’s Gowdy, Palmer, McCarver, and Allen who do most of the talking—and the heavy lifting—during the broadcast scenes. Any lines from Dick Vitale, sadly, didn’t make the final cut.

The game features a montage set to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” a fine choice—even if it came about only because Newman didn’t end up writing a new baseball tune for the film. Still, the sequence works beautifully, and the comedy in these scenes has aged remarkably well. Over thirty years later, the gags still land, and that final half hour is a big part of why The Naked Gun endures.

I’d take that final act over a dozen episodes of modern crime procedurals any day of the week. For all its silliness, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! knows how to build to a payoff—absurd, chaotic, and deeply funny. It’s an all-timer. We’ll be talking about it for decades to come.

DIRECTOR: David Zucker
SCREENWRITERS: Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Pat Proft
CAST: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, Ricardo Montalban, O.J. Simpson, Raye Birk

Paramount Pictures released The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in theaters on December 2, 1988. Grade: 5/5

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