One hundred percent pure, unadulterated co… medy
A cop is thwarting a bank robbery, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with one of the robbers. At first, they block punches, then their actions become a game of patty-cake, and then it’s a pantomime as the cop dispenses with the robber with a finger gun. Ah yes, the healing power of comedy! From the minds of legendary filmmaking trio Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker (Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker) came Airplane! (1980) and Top Secret! (1984) and then The Naked Gun (1988), a feature film version of the TV show, Police Squad! Yes, ZAZ really liked exclamation points. The trio’s brand of humor redefined blockbuster comedies, continuing Mel Brooks’s 1970s “spoof” style of adult, metanarrative, slapstick humor. A remake of The Naked Gun has been circling Hollywood for a long time, and it has finally arrived in the form of a legacy sequel directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer (Popstar; Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers). Could the new Naked Gun capture the unapologetically silly nature of the original, and is that type of parodic comedy still funny today? The answer to both is ‘yes, of course, now shut up and watch the movie.’
In the new Naked Gun, Liam Neeson (Taken) plays Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of Lt. Detective Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen in the original Police Squad! and Naked Gun film trilogy. Neeson, a serious actor who has created a lucrative late career comeback post-Taken with endless, and endlessly entertaining, renegade cop/assassin/guard flicks, is the perfect choice to spoof his own tough man cinematic persona. He’s not as apt at delivering long, witty lines like Nielsen was (and who is!?), but his gruff exterior lends itself well to a different type of angry-man humor. The Naked Gun was successful because the actors played their parts seriously, the jokes were continuous and witty, and the script was confidently silly. Neeson, along with Pamela Anderson as a grieving sister, and Danny Huston as a power-hungry Elon Musk-esque tech mogul, are all great choices to play their roles with straight, deadpan sincerity.
While it’s a shame that many of the film’s best moments are spoiled by the trailer, like the sole hysterical allusion to O.J. Simpson’s role in the original films, there are still a ton of jokes that will catch you off guard and make your soda spurt out of your nose. The Naked Gun script, co-written by Schaffer, riffs on the cliches, characters, and stereotypes of cop dramas while unleashing a barrage of one-liners, puns, and sight gags referencing and critiquing modern technology, pop culture, and social taboos. The jokes come fast, with a high jokes-per-minute ratio, whether you catch them or not, through the dialogue or in the background, making The Naked Gun instantly rewatchable. Like previous Naked Gun films, the filmmaking team had to earn an audience-friendly PG-13 rating, so there are a few moments where the humor stops just shy of crossing any R-rated boundaries, for better or worse.
Clocking in at eighty-five minutes, The Naked Gun is the type of feature comedy we don’t get anymore, the kind purposefully lacking deeper meaning or an underlying message. Without a superhero (Deadpool & Wolverine) or adventurous, romantic angle (The Lost City) to bolster its box office prospects, “pure” comedies have been all but abandoned entirely. The Naked Gun may not be a great film or the funniest film, but it’s a thoroughly fun time at the movies and the type of crowd-pleasing theater-going experience I’d be thrilled to have more of. At 73, Liam Neeson is ten years older than Leslie Nielsen was when the latter made the second Naked Gun film, so let’s all go to the theaters and make this new film a hit so the studio can quickly greenlight a sequel!
That’s it. That’s the end of the review …
… Nothing to see here! Please disperse! Nothing to see here!
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The Naked Gun opens in theaters on Friday, August 1st.
