Why The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Still Hits Different Thirty Years Later

Let’s be honest. Most comedy sequels are lazy, cash-grabbing dumpster fires that just recycle the same three jokes from the original until the audience wants to walk into traffic. But The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear is a weird exception. It’s a movie that knows it’s a sequel, hates that it's a sequel, and leans so hard into the absurdity of its own existence that it actually manages to be just as funny—maybe even funnier in some spots—than the 1988 original.

Leslie Nielsen was 65 when this movie came out in 1991. Think about that. Most people are looking at retirement portfolios at that age, but Nielsen was busy getting tangled in blue screens and falling off balconies. He had this incredible, late-career pivot from serious dramatic actor to the king of deadpan. In The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, his portrayal of Lt. Frank Drebin reaches a sort of peak "confident idiot" energy that no one has ever quite matched since.

The Plot That Doesn't Really Matter (But Sorta Does)

The movie follows a pretty standard spoof structure. Frank Drebin is back in Washington D.C., getting honored at the White House, while his ex-girlfriend Jane Spencer (played by the late Priscilla Presley) is dating a shady energy tycoon named Quentin Hapsburg. Robert Goulet plays Hapsburg with a slick, villainous charm that makes you realize why the ZAZ team (Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker) were geniuses at casting. They didn't hire comedians. They hired "serious" actors who could play the absolute insanity of the script with a straight face.

That’s the secret sauce.

If Leslie Nielsen had winked at the camera once, the whole thing would have fallen apart. Instead, he treats a scene where he’s destroying a priceless Japanese dinner party with the same gravity as a Shakespearean tragedy. It’s brilliant. The stakes in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear revolve around a renewable energy policy—the "Mainmer Report"—and a plot to replace a pro-environment scientist with a double. It's topical, even now. Maybe more so.

Visual Gags and the Art of the Background

You can't just watch this movie once. If you do, you're missing about 40% of the jokes. The ZAZ style is famous for "sight gags"—stuff happening in the background while the main characters are talking. In one scene, Frank is having a serious conversation while, in the background, a guy is literally being eaten by a shark in a tank that shouldn't even be there. Or the iconic "Blue Note" bar where everything is depressing—the pictures on the wall are of the Hindenburg and the Titanic.

It's relentless.

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I remember watching the scene where Frank tries to park his car. He just keeps hitting things. It’s a three-second joke that tells you everything you need to know about his character. He is a walking disaster who somehow always saves the day. George Kennedy returns as Ed Hocken, and O.J. Simpson is back as Nordberg. Whatever your thoughts on Simpson now, the physical comedy involving Nordberg—getting flattened, shot, or stuck under a bus—was a staple of the franchise's slapstick DNA.

Why the Critics Were Wrong About the Smell of Fear

At the time, some critics felt the movie was "more of the same." But isn't that what we wanted? David Zucker took the director's chair solo this time (Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker stayed on as executive producers), and he doubled down on the surrealism. There's a scene where Frank and Jane recreate the pottery scene from Ghost. It’s absurd. It’s messy. It’s completely unnecessary for the plot.

And that’s why it works.

Comedy in the early 90s was transitioning. We were moving away from the 80s "slobs vs. snobs" tropes into something weirder. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear bridged that gap. It took the DNA of Police Squad! (the short-lived TV show that started it all) and gave it a massive Hollywood budget. You can see the money on the screen during the climax at the energy convention. The sets are bigger, the explosions are realer, and the stunts are genuinely impressive for a movie that features a man getting a prosthetic ear stuck in a wall.

The Robert Goulet Factor

Let's talk about Robert Goulet for a second. He was a Broadway legend with a voice like velvet. Putting him in a movie where he has to react to Frank Drebin’s idiocy was a masterstroke. There’s a specific nuance to how Goulet plays Hapsburg. He isn't playing a caricature of a villain; he's playing a real villain who happens to be in a cartoon world. When he falls out of a window at the end, it’s not just a fall—it’s a sequence of events involving a lion and a tank that defies all laws of physics.

• The Barbara Bush Lookalike: The movie famously used a lookalike for the First Lady, leading to one of the most chaotic White House dinner scenes in cinema history.
• The Theme Song: Ira Newborn’s brassy, hard-boiled detective theme remains one of the best parodies of the genre, perfectly mimicking the over-the-top scores of 1970s cop shows.
• The Title: Adding the "2½" was a direct jab at the trend of "Part 2" sequels, signaling right away that the filmmakers weren't taking the "prestige" of a sequel seriously.

The Cultural Impact of 1991

1991 was a massive year for movies. You had Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Silence of the Lambs, and Beauty and the Beast. In the middle of all that high-brow cinema and groundbreaking CGI, we got a movie where a man hides inside a giant suit of armor and gets hit in the crotch.

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It was the perfect palette cleanser.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear grossed over $86 million in the US alone. That’s huge for a R-rated-style comedy (though it was PG-13). It proved that the brand of humor established in Airplane! wasn't a fluke. It had staying power. People wanted to laugh at the tropes of the very movies they were paying to see. It’s meta before "meta" was a buzzword everyone used to sound smart at parties.

Comparing it to the First and Third

Is it better than the first? Probably not. The first one had the "surprise" factor. But it’s significantly better than the third (The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult). The second film hits a sweet spot where the budget was high enough to do whatever they wanted, but the formula hadn't become stale yet. The jokes about the "Environment" were actually somewhat biting for a slapstick comedy. They poked fun at the lobbyist culture of D.C. in a way that feels surprisingly modern.

Technical Brilliance in Absurdity

The cinematography by Robert Stevens shouldn't be overlooked. To make a parody work, the movie has to look like the thing it’s parading. The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear looks like a high-stakes political thriller. The lighting is moody. The angles are dramatic. This "straight" visual style makes the sudden appearance of a puppet or a ridiculous prop ten times funnier. If the movie looked cheap, the jokes wouldn't land. Because it looks expensive, the stupidity feels intentional and high-art.

Honestly, we don't get movies like this anymore. Today's parodies are usually just references to other movies without the actual craft of joke-writing. The ZAZ team understood that a joke needs a setup, a payoff, and ideally, three more jokes hidden in the frame while the first one is happening.

How to Appreciate the Movie Today

If you're going to revisit The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, don't just put it on in the background while you're scrolling through your phone. You'll miss the best parts. You have to actually watch the edges of the screen. Look at the signs on the buildings. Listen to the nonsensical dialogue that Frank spouts during his monologues.

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"The truth hurts. Not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts."

That’s poetry. In a world of "elevated comedy" and "dramedy," there is something deeply refreshing about a movie that just wants to make you laugh until your stomach hurts. It doesn't want to teach you a lesson. It doesn't have a moral. It just wants to show you a guy accidentally destroying a museum.

Actionable Steps for the Ultimate Rewatch

To get the most out of your next viewing, try these specific "expert" approaches:

1. Spot the Recurring Cameos: Keep an eye out for the "Police Squad" regulars who show up in tiny roles.
2. The Mute Test: Try watching a five-minute sequence with the sound off. You’ll be shocked at how much physical comedy you missed because you were listening to the dialogue.
3. Contextualize the Parody: If you haven't seen 1940s film noir or 1970s police procedurals, watch a few clips of Dragnet or M Squad first. It makes Nielsen's performance even more impressive when you see the "serious" actors he was mimicking.
4. Check the Credits: Even the end credits have jokes tucked into them. Don't turn the TV off the second the screen goes black.

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear is a masterclass in the "kitchen sink" school of filmmaking. It throws everything at you—puns, slapstick, satire, and sheer nonsense—and somehow, most of it sticks. It remains a high-water mark for the spoof genre and a testament to Leslie Nielsen's unparalleled ability to be the funniest man in the room by acting like he's in a completely different movie.

Whether it’s the sight of Frank Drebin trying to blend in at a wall-to-wall celebrity gala or his disastrous attempts at romance, the film reminds us that sometimes, the best way to deal with the world is to just laugh at how ridiculous it all is. Especially the energy industry. And pottery. And especially, especially, giant suits of armor.