The Lethal Weapon series and the rest of the buddy-cop genre receives the parody treatment in this low-brow comedy. Emilio Estevez stars as Jack Colt, the Mel Gibson -like loose cannon, while Samuel L. Jackson assumes the Danny Glover role as Wes Luger, his exasperated partner. Together, Colt and Luger investigate the murder of Luger's former partner ( Whoopi Goldberg ) and discover a criminal conspiracy led by the nefarious General Mortars ( William Shatner ). Hoping to mimic the success of the Naked Gun films, director Gene Quintano (of Police Academy 4 fame) loaded the film with broad visual gags, deadpan slapstick, and gratuitous parodies of The Silence of the Lambs , Basic Instinct , and other movies. The attempt to mimic successful parodies proved ineffective, however, as critics and viewers alike found the parody stale and the juvenile humor dreary. — Judd Blaise