It’s easy now to remember Leslie Nielsen as a comic actor, but before he first teamed up with the hit spoof-making trio of Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams on Airplane! andĀ The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! he was best known for more serious roles. That dichotomy is a lot of what made his earlier comedy appearances so successful, with his straight-faced delivery heightening the ridiculousness of the lines. It makes sense then that the filmmakers tasked with relaunching theĀ Naked Gun franchise would aim for a similar casting choice, and in Liam Neeson they made a perfect one.
Starring as Frank Drebin Jr., he is the son of Nielsen’s original character and has a similar bumbling confidence, though with a bit more arrogant machismo to bring the character more in line with modern cop stories. After he gets himself removed from a high-profile bank robbery case, he and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) get assigned to a car accident that starts to look like it may be connected. The victim’s sister, Beth Davenport (no generational suffix, played by Pamela Anderson) thinks that tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston) is involved somehow and convinces Frank to help her investigate him.
Writers Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer have an innate understanding of how this type of comedy is supposed to work, barraging the audience with a rapid-fire assault of gags. The sheer volume of jokes means that they won’t all land, but the ratio of successful laughs to failed bits is here skewed heavily towards the former. Also on directing duties, Schaffer shows a keen eye for the visual language of the genres being parodied which helps to further sell the material. It takes a lot of smarts to be so dumb and this trio, who previously worked together making the surprisingly funny Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie, are apparentlyĀ very smart.
The casting couldn’t be better, with not only Neeson nailing the material but Anderson continuing her recent hot streak as the blond bombshell he can’t help but fall for. The pair have such a natural rapport with each other that they are allegedly now dating in real life. Huston nails the smarmy villain, who exudes the sort of unearned sense of superiority that is required of someone who could reasonably believe in such an utterly idiotic (and, much like what you might hear from many modern “tech bros”, more than a little troublingly eugenicist) plan.Ā
It’s not a surprise that this newĀ Naked Gun doesn’tĀ quite live up to the superb first film, but it comes much closer than anyone likely expected. I haven’t laughed this hard in a movie theater in years and found myself still chuckling about some jokes days later. I hope this movie winds up doing well enough to be considered a success, because I have missed this kind of comedy and would love to get more of it. For now though I’ll be happy we got this instant classic, which will likely go down as the funniest movie of the year, and possibly of the decade. ā ā ā ā Ā½
rated pg-13 for crude / sexual material, violence / bloody images, and brief partial nudity.
ā ā ā ā ā = Excellent | ā ā ā ā = Very Good | ā ā ā = Good | ā ā = Fair | ā = Poor
-
-
-
-
-