Dragnet

Dragnet (1987) is a crime comedy from director Tom Mankiewicz that you can watch online on iFILM, sending up the straight-faced old cop show of the same name. Sergeant Joe Friday lives by the rulebook down to the last comma, and he gets saddled with Pep Streebeck, a loose detective who follows none of them.

Dan Aykroyd plays Friday like a wind-up toy rattling off procedure without a breath, while Tom Hanks is his opposite, the sloppy, grinning Streebeck. The pair work an absurd string of thefts: a zoo lion goes missing, then a print run of porn magazines, then a squad car. The trail leads to a city cult far nastier than it first looks. Christopher Plummer and Dabney Coleman bring some heavyweight villainy to the chaos.

Aykroyd co-wrote the script and never stops firing off his signature Friday patter. The film runs on the clash of two tempers and a fond jab at a genre that took itself far too seriously. It's goofy late-eighties fun, the kind you watch with your brain switched off. Stream Dragnet (1987) online on iFILM.