Another interesting comedy with Leslie Nielsen.
This film is one of those comedies that established the humor of Leslie Nielsen, an actor who would become one of the most relevant in North American comedy in the 80s and 90s. His comic vein may not be to everyone's liking, with the quick succession of jokes and the very recurrent choice of nonsense or “slapstick” humor. However, we have to accept the fact that the film works and achieves the intended effect: to entertain us.
The script is overall very weak and focuses on the threat to the life of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, who is traveling to the USA on an official visit. It was strange to see the queen go to a baseball match, which the real monarch would never have done because it is not an activity that serves the interests of international diplomacy. It's nonsense at work. Even stranger was seeing an authentic “axis of evil” (which included at the same table the African dictators Idi Amin and Muhammar Gaddafi, the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the fanatical Iranian theocrat Ayatollah Khomeini and Mr. Gorbachev, last head of the Soviet Union) decide that the most appropriate way to teach Americans a lesson was to kill the British queen. On the other hand, this round table says a lot about what was thought of each of these international leaders at this time, included in a comprehensive group of “terrorists” without any reflection on it.
In the midst of all this succession of insanity and idiocy, it is really Nielsem who stands out and deserves applause for, once again, securing a solid leading role and asserting himself as a master in this style of comedy, someone who manages, in some mysterious way, make it less vulgar and cheap. Of course, most of the jokes are weak or tire us out due to non-stop sexual allusions. However, the actor manages to overcome this and show value.
