DRAGNET
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Parody of successful summertime action movies with Dan Aykroyd doing impressions of Jack Webb. It is unclear how Aykroyd found out how Webb talks as he has apparently never seen an episode of DRAGNET.
Dan Aykroyd grew up in the 50s and 60s; later in improvisational comedy he often drew on television personalities he saw during that time. He is equally good doing Rod Serling from THE TWILIGHT ZONE and Jack Webb from DRAGNET. Usually his parodies lasted just a few minutes on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, but his latest film allows him to do his impression of Jack Webb for an entire film. The story--c-authored by Aykroyd--is an extended parody of the DRAGNET TV series.
Aykroyd plays Joe Friday--not *the* Joe Friday but the nephew of *the* Joe Friday. Aykroyd's Friday, for some unexplained reason, has been able to inherit the famous Badge 714 from his uncle as well as the same clipped speech pattern and the same self-righteous attitude. While Aykroyd's impression of Jack Webb is pretty much on the money, overall the imitation of DRAGNET is miles wide of the mark. Aykroyd can talk like Webb but is a total failure at writing like Webb. In the old TV shows, sentences of more than four words spoken by anyone were only slightly more common than scenes of Friday shooting up heroin. Stan Freeberg had a better ear for the way people talked in DRAGNET when he wrote for his parody the exchange: "Joe?" "Yeah, Frank?" "I checked out that 38." "Yeah?" "You were right." "How so?" "It was a gun."
The story of DRAGNET has pagan rituals, gun battles, armored tanks, car chases, female flesh, a super-villain, airplane chases, and cops in funny costumes, all of which suggests that Aykroyd had a voice coach who actually had seen episodes of DRAGNET but that Aykroyd himself had never seen one and had spent his time watching successful but empty summertime films. Take out Aykroyd's character and the only similarity to the object of the parody is that both involve police. One wonders how someone can do so many parodies as Aykroyd has and still not have the slightest idea of how to do a parody.
DRAGNET is first a summertime throwaway film, second an extended SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketch, and is the parody it is purported to be third-- or perhaps tenth. Give this one a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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