‘Austin Powers’ Fans Accuse the ‘Naked Gun’ Reboot of Joke-Stealing
This summer we’re getting a new Naked Gun movie starring Liam Neeson and, mercifully, not a dead-eyed CGI Leslie Nielsen. The first full-length trailer for the comedy reboot recently dropped, and while many of its gags feel appropriately Naked Gun-esque, one moment proved to be somewhat controversial. A number of fans suggested that a certain joke seems to have been lifted from another comedy franchise about a clueless law-enforcement agent from a bygone era.
Midway through the trailer, the new Naked Gun’s villain instructs his henchman to “keep an eye” on Frank Drebin Jr. So, using a pair of heat vision goggles, the goon spies on Drebin and Pamela Anderson’s character, and seems to catch them in an intensely private moment — but it’s soon revealed that she is merely on her knees cleaning his oven with an overly phallic scrubber. It all lined up, though, to form an extremely suggestive pose.
Viewers immediately took to social media in order to complain that this particular scene was conspicuously similar to one in an Austin Powers movie.
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me also featured a scene in which the bad guy’s henchmen get the wrong idea after spying on Austin and his love interest’s silhouettes. Although the Mike Myers sequel goes even further, making it appear as though “Felicity Shagwell” is hammering a tennis racket up Austin’s butt.
And there was another version of the same joke in Austin Powers in Goldmember, because no Austin Powers joke was exempt from being repeated ad nauseum.
Some fans countered that the Austin Powers gag was actually a rip-off of a scene from the original Naked Gun. Personally, I don’t remember such a scene happening in The Naked Gun, although Naked Gun 33⅓ did include a brief, very regrettable Crying Game parody that involved a silhouette (but not a perspective-based wacky misunderstanding).
This isn’t to say that the premise didn’t precede The Spy Who Shagged Me. For example, a similar gag shows up in Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which preceded Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery by four years.
Others pointed out that if Austin Powers owes a debt to The Naked Gun, it’s really because of Austin's prolonged peeing scene…
…which wasn’t so dissimilar from Frank Drebin’s amplified urination.
Incidentally, this joke was also highly influential on Rudy Giuliani.
