The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
Short description
The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear follows Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the clumsy police officer played by Leslie Nielsen, as he takes on powerful figures in the energy business. A respected scientist, Dr. Meinheimer, is about to release a report on future energy supplies that threatens the interests of oil, coal and nuclear companies. When they abduct him and put a lookalike in his place to serve their own agenda, Drebin steps in. His investigation also brings him back into contact with Jane Spencer, the scientist's secretary and a former love interest.
The film was directed by David Zucker and written by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Pat Proft. It is the third entry in the series that began with Airplane! and continued with the first Naked Gun film in 1988, sitting between that film and BASEketball in Zucker's directing career. Alongside Nielsen, the cast includes Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson, Robert Goulet and Richard Griffiths. Released by Paramount in June 1991, it runs 85 minutes and cost about 23 million dollars, going on to take roughly 192 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 6.9/10 from around 141,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8/10 from about 2,880 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5/10 from 112 reviews places it broadly in line with those audience scores rather than sharply apart from them.
What's left behind the scenes
- Zsa Zsa Gabor appears in the opening credits. She approaches a police siren and knocks it over, saying: "And this happens every fucking time when I go shopping" — this is a parody of her own arrest in 1989 for a similar hit on a police officer.
- The film, like other works by Abrams and Zucker, repeats jokes that were already in the series "Police Squad!" (1982): the name of the "Little Italy" neighborhood is played on — when Frank drives through this neighborhood, the Roman Colosseum is visible in the car's rear window; a feature of action films is parodied — in one scene, people shoot at each other at close range, but don't hit each other (a parody of "The Lawless" (1951)).
- In the scene in the "Blue Note" bar, full of sad people, with melancholic blues music — photographs hang on the wall: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1937 LZ 129 "Hindenburg" disaster, the Titanic, and Michael Dukakis (who lost to Bush in the 1988 election). Later, portraits of Neville Chamberlain, the Edsel car (a major failure for Ford), and the Hubble Telescope (considered an expensive failure until 1993).
- “Weird Al” Yankovic appeared in a cameo role in the film – he plays a criminal who has an entire police station in his sights, but then Frank, played by Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), walks into the station, throws open the door, and knocks the criminal off his feet. According to Yankovic himself, the scene was filmed more than 20 times, and after approximately the 16th take, he developed a large bruise on his leg, to the point that at one point he was even asked if he wanted some padding to protect his leg from the door.
- Filming took place in Los Angeles from November 27, 1990, to March 7, 1991.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
