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Dragnet (1987)

What’s the Story?

Reviewed by Charles Cassady Jr.

The forerunner of DRAGNET was a classic 1950s/'60s TV crime drama (previous to that, a radio show) in which actor Jack Webb played no-nonsense Los Angeles policeman Joe Friday, with a memorable theme song, catchphrases ("Just the facts, ma'am") and monotone diction that was much parodied, even while the show was still running. A Dragnet feature film was even done in 1954. The new Joe Friday (Dan Aykroyd) is the nephew of the original, and still a proud, hard-driving, immaculately clean-cut LAPD detective. Friday gets a new, younger partner named Pep Streebek (Tom Hanks), who acts like a fun-loving big kid, to Friday's disgust. Together they investigate P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness And Normalcy), a gang committing bizarre acts of vandalism and robbery, especially targeting a Playboy-style magazine. The secret mastermind behind P.A.G.A.N. is a high-profile preacher and conservative opinion-leader (Christopher Plummer) who moonlights in Satan-worship, virgin sacrifices, and racketeering in his efforts to take over the city.

Is It Any Good?

3

With prominent Saturday Night Live talent involved, there is quite a bit of topical (euphemism for badly-out-of-date) satire, involving the Moral Majority, the movie dud Yes Giorgio, and a closing Aykroyd-Hanks rap-music (!) theme song that's sooooo stuck in the 1980s.

The movie is consistently funny, but what's the point, besides confronting the ultimate unflappable squaresville cop Joe Friday with such not-ready-for-prime-time offenses as strip clubs, pin-up girls, and devil cults? It's all comes together thanks to Dan Aykroyd's dead-on impression of Jack Webb's persona. Even within the confines of a comic caricature, Aykroyd creates a surprisingly sympathetic and fleshed-out hero with the staccato-talking, time-frozen 1950s Joe Friday, and in the course of the outsized mayhem Friday learns to loosen up and form a bond with his mismatched boyish partner (team-player Tom Hanks is not only good, he doesn't try to overshadow his co-star's extravagant schtick).

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