You can do a movie like this and make it funny. They've proved that time and again with the "Naked Gun" movies.
To say that "Loaded Weapon I" isn't half as funny as the first ten minutes of one of the "Naked Gun" flicks isn't a criticism as much as plot description.
They borrow from every cop movie under the sun ("Lethal Weapon", "Basic Instinct", "Die Hard"), manage to scrounge up a few cute extraneous roles (Shatner's is pretty good but Willis is better still) and there are a few gags that didn't have me looking away with lingering remorse (the guys straining to see up Ireland's dress during the interrogation, paying for a drug buy with a credit card then asking for the carbons, "Bohemian Rhapsody" popping up out of nowhere).
But the whole thing reeks of a last-ditch effort to try and wring the last drop out of a dying franchise (in this case, the "National Lampoon" name). Have you noticed that, other than "Animal House" and the first and third "Vacation" movies, all the rest of their products have been almost criminally unfunny? Unfunny enough to warrant investigation? Unfunny enough that showing them to torture victims would break the pact of the Geneva Convention?
Jackson acts in this one like it's a day off, Estevez tries but just can't make himself into the farceur his brother Charlie is. The rest of them try but cannot rise above a script that sounds like it was written on the back of a cocktail napkin (this was co-written by one of the guys who wrote a "Police Academy" movie - HEL-LOO-OOO!)
If I have just one wish for the new millennium it's that National Lampoon stops pointing guns at the heads of writers who couldn't write movies if their lives depended on it to script any future efforts. Provided, of course, that Lampoon has the nerve to try anymore.
Two stars, for the convenience store shootout at the beginning. THAT was funny. The rest wasn't.
To say that "Loaded Weapon I" isn't half as funny as the first ten minutes of one of the "Naked Gun" flicks isn't a criticism as much as plot description.
They borrow from every cop movie under the sun ("Lethal Weapon", "Basic Instinct", "Die Hard"), manage to scrounge up a few cute extraneous roles (Shatner's is pretty good but Willis is better still) and there are a few gags that didn't have me looking away with lingering remorse (the guys straining to see up Ireland's dress during the interrogation, paying for a drug buy with a credit card then asking for the carbons, "Bohemian Rhapsody" popping up out of nowhere).
But the whole thing reeks of a last-ditch effort to try and wring the last drop out of a dying franchise (in this case, the "National Lampoon" name). Have you noticed that, other than "Animal House" and the first and third "Vacation" movies, all the rest of their products have been almost criminally unfunny? Unfunny enough to warrant investigation? Unfunny enough that showing them to torture victims would break the pact of the Geneva Convention?
Jackson acts in this one like it's a day off, Estevez tries but just can't make himself into the farceur his brother Charlie is. The rest of them try but cannot rise above a script that sounds like it was written on the back of a cocktail napkin (this was co-written by one of the guys who wrote a "Police Academy" movie - HEL-LOO-OOO!)
If I have just one wish for the new millennium it's that National Lampoon stops pointing guns at the heads of writers who couldn't write movies if their lives depended on it to script any future efforts. Provided, of course, that Lampoon has the nerve to try anymore.
Two stars, for the convenience store shootout at the beginning. THAT was funny. The rest wasn't.