The return of The Naked Gun — complete with a new Frank Drebin, as Liam Neeson steps into the series as the son of Leslie Neilsen’s original — is a welcome return to some of the most wonderful, most stupid comedy ever seen on the big screen. Fantastically dedicated to pratfalls, puns, and sight gags, The Naked Gun series is consistently overlooked for how smart it is about being dumb, and how successful a parody of the old police procedural shows of the 1950s and ‘60s it really was. With a new Naked Gun on the way, it’s time to appreciate some other all-time great parodies, all of which we present for your consideration, of course.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

Young Frankenstein sets the parody bar high while puttin' on the Ritz

An almost perfect production from start to finish — and a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the classic monster movies of the 1930s and ‘40s — the only reasons that Young Frankenstein isn’t undoubtedly the greatest Mel Brooks movie are (a) The Producers also exists and (b) the idea for the movie came from its star and co-writer, Gene Wilder. Wilder’s energetic, fearless performance is the key to the whole movie, but it’s impossible to overlook a supporting cast that includes Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, and Madeline Kahn, each one at the top of their game. Like all of the best parodies, it’s a movie that is hilarious even if you have no idea about what it’s making fun of, but for those who are familiar with the classic Universal monster movies, this honestly might be one of the finest movies ever made. And with a fine musical number, as well!

Available to stream on HBO Max

Hot Fuzz skewers cop movie cliches with love

Hot Fuzz isn’t just another parody of police movies — the inverse, in many ways, on the approach of Police Squad, in that everything went from over-the-top to purposefully understated — but also a parody of a particular school of British filmmaking (television-making, perhaps might be more applicable) that undercuts the so-called cozy genre by injecting it with an undercurrent of (wonderfully mundane) corruption and intrigue that Midsummer Murders just couldn’t condone. (Maybe that’s a British thing; or, in the US, a BritBox thing.) All of it is delivered, of course, with Edgar Wright’s playful hyperkinetic direction and a cast made up of UK acting royalty past and present. If only ‘regular’ cop movies could be half as much fun to watch.

Available to stream on Prime Video

Walk Hard is the parody so good, it ruins the source material

If anything, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is too powerful a parody — that rare parody that manages to essentially overwrite the genre from that point forward. Sure, John C. Reilly’s Dewey Cox makes it through an impressively spot-on skewering of such movies as Ray and Walk The Line, but it’s so good at poking funs of the cliches of the musical biopic that movies that have followed have fallen prey to its power. Anyone who saw Walk Hard in 2007 surely found it hard to take the acclaimed 2024 Bob Dylan pic A Complete Unknown seriously, for example, even if they probably felt bad for Timothy Chalamet’s Dylan for not getting into a machete duel with anyone (onscreen, at least). Even if you’re not familiar with any of the (many!) musical in-jokes in this movie, it’s still an utterly irresistible watch; think of it as the ultimate episode of Behind the Music from the same reality that Anchorman took place in.

Available to stream on HBO Max