In a sentenceDan Aykroyd is funny enough to make the car chases feel like an interruption
Sgt. Joe Friday (Dan Aykroyd) brings an old-fashioned taste for lectures to police work, with Pep Streebeck (Tom Hanks) the unpredictable half of the central pairing. Captain Gannon (Harry Morgan) is the senior officer. A pagan-sacrifice plot draws the story away from ordinary police procedure and into disguises and car chases. Reverend Jonathan Whirley (Christopher Plummer), Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul) and Jerry Caesar (Dabney Coleman) are also among its characters. Friday maintains his solemn manner as the case gives the pair increasingly outlandish business to attend to.
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Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks find a workable comic rhythm in Dragnet, but the disguises, sacrifice plot and car chases keep interrupting it. There are laughs here, just not enough for a recommendation.
Tom Mankiewicz directs Dragnet as a police spoof that keeps finding things to do when it needs things to laugh at. Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks make an appealing pair, and their exchanges offer enough pleasure to suggest a better comedy. The pagan-sacrifice plot and car chases make the film harder work than it ought to be. At 106 minutes, this is a mixed evening, with good performers asked to keep weak material going.
Dan Aykroyd gives Sgt. Joe Friday a solemnity that is funny before the writing has done much at all. We laughed at his urge to lecture: he makes Friday’s disapproval feel like a professional obligation. He does not need a disguise or a chase to establish the joke. The limitation is that the character’s old-fashioned certainty becomes tiresome when the script simply lets him go on, without finding a fresh reason for us to enjoy listening.
Tom Hanks helps because Pep Streebeck gives that certainty something to contend with. His less predictable presence keeps the pairing from becoming a prolonged demonstration of Friday’s peculiarities. Their chemistry is the film’s most dependable pleasure, though even a willing double act cannot make every detour worth taking. Christopher Plummer is another asset as Reverend Jonathan Whirley, bringing enough comic assurance to make us wish the supporting material gave him more useful work.
The screenplay, by Alan Zweibel, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Mankiewicz, has a habit of treating a new costume as a new joke. Disguises can be funny, but here they too often interrupt the verbal comedy without supplying much in return. The sacrifice material has the same difficulty: its oddness is asked to do most of the work. Police parody needs a sharper sense of what deserves to be mocked than the script consistently provides.
The car chases are a poor use of the film’s time, however much activity they provide. The cinematography, credited to Robert C. Thomas and Matthew F. Leonetti, serves these passages without giving us much comic reason to watch them. Robert F. Boyle’s production design has a similarly thankless assignment in supporting the pagan-sacrifice business. The trouble with these sequences is that their setting and activity command attention long after the jokes have stopped earning it.
William D. Gordean and Richard Halsey handle the editing, and the balance between conversation and action never feels settled. Too much time passes between the exchanges that make the partnership enjoyable. Ira Newborn supplies the music, but the difficulty sustaining a comic rhythm begins with the writing, beyond anything a score could repair. The film keeps asking its performers to recover our interest after another stretch of plot, which becomes a wearing way to spend a comedy.
Save it for an evening when a few good comic performances will be enough. Anyone looking for a tightly worked police spoof is likely to become impatient with the time spent getting from one laugh to the next. There is no need to give the car chases your undivided attention.
The reviews lean towards mixed or negative, with praise clustering around the performers rather than the parody itself. Dan Aykroyd’s convincing embodiment of Sergeant Joe Friday and Tom Hanks’s comic contributions give critics something to enjoy even when the jokes falter. Some also credit the film’s affection for its television source, bright dialogue and clever ideas, though these pleasures do not add up to sustained comedy for most critics.
Reservations centre on the shortage of laughs, repetitive disguises and a plot that lets spectacle crowd out the fun. There is disagreement over the sacrifice material: Radio Times identifies the virgin-sacrifice gag as a comic highlight, while the Los Angeles Times faults the pagan-sacrifice storyline and excessive car chases. The spread is fairly wide. Collider supplies the clearest positive dissent, praising the leads’ chemistry and treating the film as an entertaining adaptation that works independently of its source.
The page is inaccessible, so its verdict cannot be verified. No specific praise or complaint can be confirmed from the available text.
Read the full review →Newman finds it a fun spoof, though later TV-series film spoofs surpassed it. He praises the clever ideas and Christopher Plummer’s supporting turn, but criticizes the frequent costume-and-disguise routines.
Read the full review →The available description suggests a mixed verdict on the film’s treatment of its central character. It praises Dan Aykroyd for convincingly capturing Sergeant Joe Friday, while faulting the character’s dated sententiousness.
Read the full review →Hutchinson finds the parody short on laughs despite the talents of its leads. He singles out the virgin-sacrifice gag as the film’s most successful source of humor.
Read the full review →Benson finds the film an uneven comedy whose fun gets lost in an overblown plot. She praises the affection for the original show, the bright dialogue, and the performers’ comic moments, while faulting the pagan-sacrifice storyline and car-chase excess.
Read the full review →The review finds the parody more innocuous than inventive and says its humor is difficult to sustain. It singles out Tom Hanks as the film’s winning wildcard.
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Hot FuzzAnother procedural obsessive, with jokes that survive the arrival of the action.
A Shot in the Dark · not reviewed yetPolice authority becomes funnier as the detective’s confidence grows less justifiable.
Police Story · not reviewed yetFor police comedy whose action contributes rather than postpones the entertainment.
The GuardAn Irish police partnership sustained by abrasive conversation and incompatible professional habits.
The Other Guys · not reviewed yetMismatched detectives and bureaucratic absurdity, with more comic mileage in the partnership.
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