National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)

The Lord of the Rings gang is back. This time, we are told the story of young Bilbo Baggins, how he is brought into an epic adventure that will eventually culminate in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Martin Freeman plays the young Bilbo Baggins, who is a happy-go-lucky hobbit in Middle Earth, who is enticed into a quest by the wizard Gandalf. On the quest is a small, but determined army of 13 dwarfs set to recover their rightful place/ home/ palace, Lonely Mountain, and their earnings in gold. They were driven away from this place by a fierce dragon, and nobody has been able to enter the castle since. However, the leader of the dwarfs, Thorin, has access to a key that may open up an alternate entrance.The dragon is keenly aware of dwarfs' smells, and may be alerted, but would be unlikely to notice a hobbit; a dragon would not have encountered a hobbit, as hobbits are by nature docile and non- confrontational. This is where Bilbo comes in, but the dwarfs, especially Thorin, are skeptical about his involvement, feeling that he would chicken out and be unreliable for the mission.I am not a Tolkien fan, and the LOTR movies were not my cup of tea, so I am not the right audience to comment on this. However, my two cents - Very picturesque directing, brilliant visual effects, and elaborate, if short action sequences litter the movie. 3D effects were really bad for me, but I think that may be more a comment on the theater than the movie - seeing as the 3D visuals were widely applauded. As brilliantly as the movie was done, it just didn't cut mustard with me. I felt underwhelmed; the movie felt too long, the plot too sparse, the characters too weak.One exception was Gollum. The scenes with Gollum were scary, intense, and powerful. Despite the short screen time, Gollum pulled off quite an effect.

Loaded Weapon 1 was really the original spoof movie before we got into movies like Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc. This is really a break out comedy performance for Emilio Estevez, who portrays a Mel Gibson sort of character in this spoof. Alongside him is Samuel L. Jackson, who is the equivalent to Danny Glover. All in all this film has a ton of celebrity cameos from Dennis Leary to Phil Hartman to even Corey Feldman. Also starring alongside as the main villains are Will Shatner and Tim Curry. The funniest character of the film is entirely Jon Lovitz. He was definitely a scene stealer in this one, even though the jokes seemed sort of unfunny. So check out this Lampoon flick. It may not be as good as Animal House and Vacation, but it's worth a try.

I'm not talking only about the IMDb score ... It's generally not given the credit it deserves. This movie is really funny. Plus it has all those great actors ...Samuell L. Jackson, Tim Curry, Emilio Estevez and so forth. There are even brief cameos (the most notorious is Bruce Willis, but I won't spoil it for you).This movie spoofs and parodies everything from movies to television and it is right on target! Although the title refers to Lethal Weapon, it is not only a genre spoof, but it helps to have a guiding storyline.Every (Movie/TV)cliche is taken "care" of in this movie, so it is likely that you will find something new to laugh at every time you watch it. It is just not possible to catch everything the first time around. Especially, when you laugh half the time and miss some lines of dialogue!

first of all, ignore the fact that this film has "national lampoons" name on it. loaded weapon 1 is far better than all of the awful lampoons films.this is a spoof, through and through. the jokes are some of the most stupid i've ever seen, the acting seems to be quite deliberately bad (we all know that most of the principal players in this movie can act better), and even some big goofs and mistakes seem to have been left in. if you see these things and you think it's a bad movie because of them, you're missing the point. the film is intentionally bad, in the same way starship troopers was intentionally cheesy.so if you're in the mood for something that you don't have to take seriously (at all), this movie is just the thing. watch it once for all the obvious jokes, and then again to find all the jokes in the background (and there's loads of them).my favourite spoof of all time. 10/10