Dragnet: Part Parody, Part Homage (Review with Link)

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In the summer of 1987, Universal Studios released Dragnet, the third feature film based on the long-running radio and TV police procedural series created in 1949 by actor-director-producer Jack Webb.  The show, which ran on-and-off from ’49 to 2003 on various media platforms on two networks and in syndication, is famous for its musical theme (“Dum - - - de - DUM - DUM"), its cinema verite approach to storytelling, and Webb’s deadpan delivery of his dialogue. 

Five years after Jack Webb’s death (which came just as a new version of Dragnet was in pre-production), writer-director Tom Mankiewicz teamed up with actors Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks to create a comedy which was part parody and part loving tribute to Webb’s very straight-faced drama. 

Here, Ackroyd, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mankiewicz and Alan Zweibel, stars as Joe Friday, nephew and namesake to Webb’s famous Los Angeles Police Department plainclothes sergeant.  The younger Friday is a bit taller and stockier, but he’s just as conservative and serious as his late uncle; he wears suits and ties, keeps his hair cut in a fashion that was out of style by 1965, and speaks in the same dry manner as the Webb incarnation of Badge 714, albeit with faster delivery. 

To Friday’s chagrin, his superiors in the LAPD assign him to work with a new parner, Pep Streebek (Hanks), whose brash attitude, street smarts, and personal wardrobe are almost diametrically opposed to his anachronistic, by the book ways. 
  
Joe Friday: I don't care what undercover rock you crawled out from, there's a dress code for detectives in Robbery-Homicide. Section 3-605. 10. 20. 22. 24. 26. 50. 70. 80. It specifies: clean shirt, short hair, tie, pressed trousers, sports jacket or suit, and leather shoes, preferably with a high shine on them. 

The plot, such as it is, has Friday and Streebek investigating a bizarre series of apparently unconnected robberies which have taken place in Los Angeles.  Among the items stolen by unknown parties: a month’s production run of a pornographic magazine, a wedding dress, a lion’s mane, police and fire department vehicles, and even a tanker full of chemicals.  Though perplexed at first, the two detectives eventually discern that a bizarre group known as People Against Goodness And Normalcy (PAGAN) is behind the thefts. 
  
Joe Friday: [looking at a lion whose mane has been shaved into a Mohawk] Somebody must have wanted that lion's mane pretty bad to pull a twisted stunt like that. 
Pep Streebeck: Although, as Mohawks go it's not that bad. It'll grow back. 
Joe Friday: Yeah, and how do you tell that to these kids here who have never seen a lion before and now probably won't have the desire to ever see one again. 
Pep Streebeck: Kids, it'll grow back. 
[kids cheer] 

Things go awry, however, when a tipster tells Friday and Streebek that PAGAN is making a deadly gas in a milk factory.  The two officers lead a raid on the supposed PAGAN facility – even using an LAPD armored vehicle – but find that the milk factory is….a milk factory.   

After this fiasco, Friday and Streebek infiltrate a PAGAN ritual, dressed in bizarre street ruffian outfits.  There, they save a gorgeous virgin named Connie Swale (Alexandra Paul) from being sacrificed by PAGAN’s masked leader. 

Of course, even the ultra-starchy Joe Friday has a heart, and he falls for “the Virgin Connie Swail” (as he refers to her throughout most of the remainder of the film)…hard.  He is so taken by the gorgeous young woman that he stubbornly defies Captain Frank Gannon (Harry Morgan, who reprises his role from the TV series) and stays on the case after he is ordered to “stand down.” 

Dragnet also introduces a crusading televengalist, Reverend Whirley (Christopher Plummer), who seems to represent the same old-fashioned values held dear by Joe Friday. Charming and suave (like many televengalists), Whirley also has a darker, baser side (also like many televangelists) which belie his family values facade. 

 For more of my opinion about this 1987 comedy film, please click here

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