National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 Reviews

A goofy spoof of some of Hollywood's recent box office champs, NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON owes more than a nod to the irreverent writing that powered laugh-a-minute romps like AIRPLANE! and THE NAKED GUN. Unfortunately, the density and quality of the gags here fail to match the hilarious wallop of those predecessors. Trigger-happy narcotics squad detective Jack Colt (Emilio Estevez) is teamed with by-the-book man Wes Luger (Samuel L. Jackson) to look into the death of Luger's former beat partner, Billie York (Whoopi Goldberg). Once the dysfunctional duo get going, nothing--not even a relentless onslaught of inane comments or sight gags featuring police playing limbo or a meeting with a Hannibal Lecter-like psychopath--can stop them. Obviously, gags rather than plot are central to a movie like LOADED WEAPON, but even so, neither the writing nor the acting is strong enough here. Estevez and Jackson are adequate as deadpan actors who remain oblivious to the chaos around them, but they lack the super-straight persona that makes Leslie Nielsen so effective as a dimwitted cop in the NAKED GUN movies. Often the jokes seem to barely squeak over their heads when they should fly.