review for Dragnet on AllMovie

Tom Mankiewicz' amiable big-screen version of the long-running and immensely successful Dragnet series took a far more satirical and tongue-in-cheek tone than the original. Dan Aykroyd stars as the nephew of the inimitable Joe Friday as he goes after a shady religious cult with the help of irreverent new partner Pep Streebek Tom Hanks. Jack Webb, who produced the original Dragnet, played lead detective Friday, specializing in a kind of wooden non-acting that set the tone for a series whose technical primitiveness and emotional flatness evoked an Army training film. Aykroyd, who clearly loves this character, has excised Webb's only known expression, a grimace of perennial disgust, while keeping the '50s attitudes and uptight bearing, and adding his own talent for spouting bureaucratic arcana at the speed of light. Hanks is a perfect audience surrogate as the low-key partner constantly shocked by the behavior of this archaic fish out of water. The plot, which revolves around the activities of a not very frightening cult, is that of a thousand buddy-cop movies, but the two comedians take their battered vehicle for a hilarious ride.