To be up front, I was not always excited about The Naked Gun. As a kid, I used to watch the old episodes of Police Squad!, the show that led to the eventual trilogy of comedy classics starring Leslie Nielsen and directed by David Zucker, the same director behind my all-time favorite comedy, Top Secret! In short, I love these movies, and while the third one isn’t great, it’s not horrible. They are goofy, laugh-out-loud riots with so many visual gags you can watch them repeatedly and always find something new. It’s been a while since Hollywood made movies like that, and…well, The Naked Gun is kinda sacred in that way.
All of that said, The Naked Gun is damned hilarious. One of the most uproarious movies I’ve seen in a theater in a long time. While I have some complaints about it playing a bit safe with the comedic violence, there’s no denying that director Akiva Schaffer has nailed the juvenile slapstick tone in the true Zucker tradition. Schaffer was always the right guy for the job. He proved it a few years ago with the satirical Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and the pitch-perfect Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. There has to be just the right mix of childish playground humor and tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, and The Naked Gun nails it.
But what about Liam Neeson filling the shoes of former star Leslie Nielsen? Neeson’s a funny guy but we don’t think of him as a comedic actor. Fortunately, he’s worked with producer Seth MacFarlane before in Ted 2 and the underrated A Million Ways to Die in the West. The key to playing Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Nielsen’s character, is not acting as if you’re in a stupid comedy. Drebin, called upon to investigate a murder tied to an Elon Musk-esque tech genius played by Danny Huston, is ultra-serious and the prototypical “man’s man”, which is exactly why he’s so ridiculous in a movie like this. Neeson’s tough-guy persona, cultivated in too many Taken movies and other bland ripoffs, significantly contributes to his performance.
There are too many great gags to choose from, with many recurring throughout the movie and eliciting laughs each time. Such as the never-ending supply of coffee for Drebin and his partner Ed Hocken Jr., with Paul Walter Hauser playing the son of George Kennedy’s character from the original movies. Schaffer and his co-writers aren’t afraid to mix things up, either, with a surreal horror interlude involving Frank, his love interest Beth Davenport, played by Pamela Anderson, and a snowman that magically comes to life. It’s bizarre and awesome and I want to see that horror movie made right now!
Speaking of Anderson, she’s really great here, too. Like Nielsen, she plays her character straight even when she’s performing an absurd jazz routine as a distraction for Frank. Anderson is having a moment following her tremendous performance in The Last Showgirl, and I’m here for all of this career resurgence.
Along with Danny Huston and Kevin Durand doing what they do best, playing villains, The Naked Gun is perfectly cast. I also dug CCH Pounder as the hardass Police Chief trying to keep Drebin in line.
Clocking in at just 85 minutes, The Naked Gun doesn’t screw around in doing what it set out to do, and that’s fill theaters with big laughs. As Neeson winds down his career and veers away from action movies, we could be seeing the start of his renaissance as a comedic actor. The Naked Gun did the same thing for Nielsen years ago, so it would only be fitting.
The Naked Gun opens on August 1st from Paramount Pictures.
