Raunchy, Overlooked 90s Comedy Has More Punchlines Than You Can Handle

By Robert Scucci
| Published 22 seconds ago

The only thing I love more than a solid neo-noir crime thriller is a parody that only cares about one thing: jamming as many jokes into the premise as humanly possible. The Naked Gun franchise holds up so well because there are so many visual gags happening in the background while its characters speak almost exclusively in puns and non sequiturs that the movies practically demand multiple viewings. 1993’s Fatal Instinct is cut from the same cloth, but it’s rarely celebrated these days because critics brushed it under the rug upon release. It currently holds a 14 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here’s the thing about movies like Fatal Instinct. They’re meant to be stupid. They’re meant to be over-the-top exercises in character incompetence and miscommunication. Everything about Fatal Instinct is intentional, with the goal being to make the smartest, stupid crime thriller you could beam into your skull on Tubi. I normally agree with old Roger Ebert reviews, but I can say with confidence that he was wrong to give Fatal Instinct a one-and-a-half star review.

Ned Ravine Is Your New Favorite Idiot

Fatal Instinct follows the exploits of Ned Ravine (Armand Assante), a cop with a law degree who incarcerates criminals and then takes them on as defense clients. More often than not, his efforts backfire because, as the arresting officer, he already has the evidence proving the person he’s defending is guilty. When approached by sexbomb Lola Cain (Sean Young) to look over some legal documents, their meeting quickly leads to an extramarital affair that he needs to hide from his wife, Lana (Kate Nelligan).

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Ned depending on how you look at it, Lana is having an affair of her own with her mechanic, Frank (Christopher McDonald). It’s fortunate because Lana is far too distracted with her own sexcapades to suspect Ned of foul play. It’s unfortunate because Lana and Frank plan to kill Ned under very specific circumstances in order to cash in on his handsome life insurance policy.

Meanwhile, convicted felon Max Shady (James Remar) finishes his sentence and swears revenge on Ned, who, thanks to his double dipping into law enforcement and the legal field, landed him behind bars for seven years. The reason? Ned Ravine is a total idiot.

Of course, all of these plot points are established between wild sexual encounters involving a fridge, a belt sander, and just about any smooth surface you can think of, making you wonder exactly how Fatal Instinct landed a PG-13 rating. My guess is that since everything is so ridiculously over the top in every conceivable way, the censors were willing to let this one slip through the cracks. It’s overtly sexual, but also so slapstick that there’s no way anybody could take any of it seriously.

Profoundly Stupid In The Smartest Ways

Jam-packed with double entendres from start to finish, it takes a special kind of director like Carl Reiner to fully realize the kind of shtick that writer David O’Malley wanted front and center. Facial expressions and elaborate sight gags dominate Fatal Instinct. Guns have volume knobs on their silencers. Cigarette smoke billows out of mouths like a fog machine. Detectives slip repeatedly in crime scene blood. Sports commentators sit at the back of the courtroom offering instant replays for the viewing audience at home.

Fatal Instinct is so dumb that it’s actually smart. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments that you’ll want to freeze frame, rewind, and replay. It’s the only way to keep up with its rapid-fire joke delivery, and even then you might still miss a punchline or two. Don’t let the critics fool you on this one because it doesn’t deserve to sit in the trenches over at Rotten Tomatoes. It’s good, dumb fun if I’ve ever seen it, and that’s all it’s ever trying to be.

As of this writing, Fatal Instinct is streaming for free on Tubi.