By request, an interruption of the ordinary alphabetical order of things for a “dumb comedy week of the Neverending Film Festival” — three comedies recommended by readers. None are really dumb, all were fun watching, and there’ll be more, soon.
Police Squad! (in color, 1982)
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
The Wrong Guy (1997)
Police Squad! (in color, 1982)
The beloved Naked Gun, its less beloved sequels, and the recent remake all trace back to this short-lived TV series. Sit back for six episodes of absurdity in detective work, from David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, after their success with The Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!
I remember loving this show when it was on. No VCRs, no rescheduling, so I was in front of the box every week for nonstop nuttiness that stopped too soon, poking at every stupid cliché from the cop genre. Binge-watching it today is the first time I’ve seen it since Thursday nights in the summer of ’82, and it’s still funny, but what whacks me hardest is that every episode is the same:
First, the preposterous opening theme, which is just a jazzy re-do of the theme from American Bandstand, ending with an announced “special guest star” who does nothing but die, and has nothing to do with the plot.
Then comes the crime, which is always stupid. We don’t see “Sargent Frank Drebin, detective lieutenant, Police Squad, a special division of the police force” until the second act, which starts with Drebin driving his puke green squad car, introducing himself in voiceover, and arriving at the scene of the crime, where every week his boss is already waiting.
Like 25-minute clockwork, Drebin solves the crime using nothing but puns and sight gags, charades or a basketball game or a hilarious cameo, and then each episode ends with an epilogue and a back-slapping freeze frame, played for laughs, of course.
In addition to that framework, several of the same jokes recur episode after episode. Like, Drebin never stops his car without hitting something on the sidewalk, and when he needs help cracking the case he always turns to Johnny the shoeshine man (William Duell, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), who knows the answers — if he’s paid — to any question, including baseball and existential stuff.
But there was a joke shortage in the early ’80s, and anyway, the jokes are hilarious. Doesn’t matter if they’ve already done that gag, when the gag is still funny.
Leslie Nielsen was always a straight dramatic actor until he became Drebin, and nobody ever took him seriously again. Robert Wuhl, maybe best known as a baseball coach in Bull Durham, was story editor and sometimes co-writer.
The Naked Gun movies had bigger budgets, better tricks, louder laughs, but the TV show is the real deal. I watched all six episodes without a break, then watched them again two days later.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Leonardo DiCaprio was a child and adolescent actor, perfectly adequate in This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. He’s still a movie star, but in every role since he’s been old enough to vote, he comes across as an arrogant prick.
That’s because he is an arrogant prick, I’m certain. And he’s a lousy actor, so his arrogance and prickery always comes through, whether it’s right for the character or not — see DiCaprio’s assorted arrogant pricks in Catch Me If You Can, Gangs of New York, Inception, Titanic, and every damned thing he’s in.
He stars in this movie, which is why I’d never seen it, never even considered seeing it. Had the impression it’s a drama, but Claude told me it’s a comedy and I’m on a comedy kick, so what the hell, let’s do this… but I knew I’d hate The Wolf of Wall Street.
It’s a gaudy, funny spin through cocaine-addled capitalism, with DiCaprio as an arrogant prick of a crooked stockbroker who rips off clients, lies to everyone, holds orgies in the office, etc. I’m annoyed to report that the movie is enjoyable, and DiCaprio is utterly believable playing basically DiCaprio.
“If anyone here thinks I’m superficial or materialistic, go get a job at fucking McDonald’s, ’cause that’s where you fucking belong!”
Directed by Martin Scorsese, co-starring Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie, with Kyle Chandler, Jon Favreau, Matthew McConaughey, and Rob Reiner.
Billed as a true story, via the actual guy’s memoir, which means he probably comes off better than he was, though he comes off thoroughly awful. It’s not really a comedy, but I laughed more often than at most movies trying to be funny.
It’s as ridiculous and excessive as America itself, at least until the second half, when it loses momentum as DiCaprio rather badly attempts to play ‘drug overdose’ and ‘forced to wear a wire’. And even then, what comes across most is ‘arrogant prick’.
Still, my verdict is yes, for the movie’s first half and its uncommonly honest overview of capitalism as for, by, and only about arrogant pricks.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Wrong Guy (1997)
“You will never grow one single ear of your filthy corn here.”
Typed, there’s nothing particularly funny about that line, but in context it’s a belly laugh, and there’s a lot of that going around in this flick.
So… Nelson Hibbert expects a promotion at the office, and when he doesn’t get it, he becomes enraged and tells the CEO he’ll kill him. After he’s escorted away by Security, Hibbert cries for a while, then barges into the boss’s office and finds him dead, so he screams and pulls the knife out of the dead boss’s body, getting himself covered with blood, and then runs down the office hallway screaming bloody murder and still holding the knife.
Hibbert’s sure he’ll be the prime suspect, so he goes on the lam, but a hidden camera recorded video of the murder, so the cops know Hibbert isn’t the perp. They aren’t chasing him, which makes this an unusual chase movie.
A comedy built over the bare bones of a Hitchcock plot, The Wrong Man opens with a faux Saul Bass title sequence that sets the mood, with music that apes Bernard Herrmann’s thriller scores.
Written by Dave Foley, David Anthony Higgins, and Jay Kogen, and directed by David Steinberg, who gives himself a Hitchcockian cameo. Foley, Higgins, and Jennifer Tilly star, with Tilly given little to do beyond being cute & sexy, at which she’s a natural.
A few moments of greatness, like the send-up of the “getaway via freight train” trope, but the film’s great accomplishment is that It works as satire, sometimes just silliness, and always delivers at least a smile, and I mean always. It’s an hour and a half without even a brief moment that isn’t fun, funny, or at least amusing.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Why Hollywood keeps making soulless movies
A home away from home: Goodbye to the Lake Street Screening Room
8/7/2026
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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