We saw The Naked Gun today. For whatever reason, my kids really wanted to see it with us. Why this movie, I can’t say, but since they never want to do anything with us anymore, we were more than happy to humour them.

I’ve always been ambivalent about the Police Squad franchise. Maybe ambivalent isn’t the right word. I’ve always thought the movies and TV show were funny, but also mind-numbingly boring at the same time. The plot is irrelevant; you’re just waiting for the next joke. It’s kind of like porn in that way.

The jokes are always funny, but not funny enough to watch over and over again. They’re just dumb dad jokes. In fact, the most memorable part of The Naked Gunn 33 1/3, for me anyway, was that when I saw it in the theater in 1994, it was the second time I was in a movie theater during an earthquake.

I’ll admit, though, there were some clever jokes in this movie. I particularly like the “mans laughter” joke. When I saw in the preview that they recycled the gag from Austin Powers, I was surprised and disappointed that they would copy a joke from another movie, but they took it so much further that it almost seemed original.

Overall, it was funny, but I don’t want to have to sit through it again, and I hope they don’t try to stretch it into a trilogy.