Although Tom Hanks and Christopher Plummer and Dan Ackroyd have certainly done better work than Dragnet, I can't think of a movie where any of them would have had better fun making it. Dragnet is one of the guilty pleasures I have, a film that will never be rated as one of the greatest of all time, but a film that I split a gut laughing at even though I know all the jokes coming.
Dragnet is a satirical version of the famous documentary style police show from the Fifties and the later color version from the sixties. Dan Ackroyd's dead-on impersonation of the no-nonsense monotone Jack Webb that a generation of Americans grew up remembering is excellent. Like Webb he plays it completely straight or maybe I should say straight man.
Because he's got a new partner fresh from undercover narcotics in Tom Hanks. Ackroyd's not quite used to the girl chasing, motorcycle loving partner that he's been assigned to. He's been brought up in the strict traditions of his Uncle Joe and he has a photograph of Jack Webb on his desk. He's even got Harry Morgan as his captain and we well remember that Harry Morgan was Jack Webb's partner in the sixties version of Dragnet.
Anyway the two of them are assigned to investigate an assortment of crimes that a motorcycle gang called the PAGANS are responsible for. I can't explain any more because the plot gets positively surreal from here. All I can say is the laughs never stop.
Look for some good supporting performances in addition to those mentioned from Elizabeth Ashley as the new police commissioner, Alexandra Paul as 'the virgin Connie Swale', Jack O'Halloran as a Pagan member, Kathleen Freeman as a foulmouthed landlady, and Dabney Coleman as a Hugh Hefner type publisher.
But most of all this film belongs to Christopher Plummer in every scene he's in. He plays the whole thing with a twinkle in his eye when he's being the most sanctimonious as the Reverend Jonathan Whirley. I can't think of a film where Plummer is funnier in or one where it looks like he's having such a good time.
The good time is positively infectious. The most hidebound stuffed shirt will love this film as I did.
