Ha ha, hello ma’am, it’s Burl! I’ve just watched that movie
version of Dragnet, and I’m here to
tell you all about it, though be warned: along with the just the facts, a few
opinions will be mixed in!
This was a (very) minor favourite among my pals and I back
when it was a newer picture! None of us had seen the show, either in its early
or late 60s variants, so all we really took away from this was the sheepskin
dance and The Virgin Connie Swail! Ha ha, we sure laughed at that Vi*gin Connie Swail business, and I remember it
particularly tickled the funnybone of my friend D. Davey B.!
I’ll back up and give you some idea of the plot! First we
have Dan Aykroyd, from Ghostbusters
and The Great Outdoors, perfectly
cast as the nephew of Jack Webb’s Joe Friday! This Friday, also named Joe, is a
humourless, rulebook-brandishing scold, so naturally is teamed up 1980s style
with a character meant to be his complete opposite, in this case a casual
slackster called Pep Streebeck! Ha ha, Pep! Anyway, Pep is played by Tom Hanks,
famous from his appearance in The Money Pit, and while you might be expecting the slobby Hanks from Bachelor Party, the better to contrast
Friday and his brush cut, we actually get something more like the regular-guy
Hanks from Turner & Hooch and He Knows You’re Alone!
It seems Los Angeles is being plagued by a series of extralegal
outrages committed by an organization called P.A.G.A.N., which leaves business
cards at the scenes of its crimes! It quickly becomes clear that a nasty
reverend and a corrupt lady police commissioner are behind it all, though to
what actual end I never was sure! The reverend is played with lots of goony
laughing by Christopher Plummer, every bit as evil here as he was in The Silent Partner and Dreamscape, and Elizabeth Ashley, older,
wiser and less n*ked than she was in Paperback Hero, is the police comissioner!
Mixed in with this gang is a lisping Hugh Hefner clone super-hammed
by Dabney Coleman from Rolling Thunder and Cloak & Dagger;
a hulking henchman named Muzz; the grumpy police chief, played by Colonel Potter of
course; a foul-tongued landlady played by Kathleen Freeman from The Malibu Bikini Shop; a granny played
by Lenka Peterson, who was Homer’s mom in Homer;
and of course The Virgin Connie Swail, an ingénue role essayed by Alexandra
Paul from Christine!
Of all these actors it is Aykroyd who stands head and
shoulders above the rest, with his high-and-tight and clipped delivery! Ha ha,
he’s genuinely funny, and though the act seems like it should get old quickly,
Aykroyd keeps it fun all the way through! The rest of the picture, while
amusing, can’t quite live up to the standard he sets!
The plot mistakes incomprehensibility for purposeful goofitry,
and the visual style is so basic as to be drabber than the TV show it’s based
on! Ha ha! It tries to be exciting at times, as with the climactic shootout,
which plays like the end of Beverly Hills Cop if nobody actually got hit by any bullets; but there it fails! So, as a
piece of cinema, I find Dragnet
wanting!
But as a mindless 80s amusement it offers a comfortable,
ephemeral enjoyment! And I do have to report that I had a good time watching it,
so with that in mind, and also its flaws, I award Dragnet two flailing sheepskins!
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