Due to Paramount Global capitulating to political pressure and thus setting dangerous precedents, this will be my last review of any of their films. I cannot willingly stand by and say nothing, as government interference with the media is a freefall that’s hard to course-correct. That said, this movie—a homonymous legacy sequel to The Naked Gun—is the one to go out on, as it’s everything I hoped for when this was announced. I’ve been a huge fan of The Naked Gun and its sequels for a long time, and this movie didn’t disappoint at all. Even with the trailers spoiling many of the broader jokes, it packs a ton of sorely-needed laughs in its tight 85 minutes.
It’s a perfect runtime for comedies like this, not overstaying its welcome and leaving the crowd wanting more (in a good way). Everyone’s in on the joke, carrying on the played-straight-for-yuks mantle created by the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team with their six-episode crime parody show “Police Squad!” and the three films that followed in 1988, 1991, and 1994. The formula, which has been around since the beginning, is to take a serious concern and deconstruct or utterly destroy it with sight gags, confused wordplay, and physical comedy ill-befitting its subject matter. But it’s not just enough to have the comedy in there; there has to be an honest-to-gosh conflict or conspiracy that could, in a normal film, stand on its own and be deadly serious.
Well, maybe not deadly serious. There’s always some kind of goofy, implausible characteristic of the big bad’s plan, and it’s up to the equally goofy, implausible Frank Drebin to sort it out. As the original actor behind Frank, Leslie Nielsen, has passed away, Liam Neeson (the similarity in their names has not escaped me) has stepped into this role, playing Frank Drebin Jr., who has not only inherited his father’s name but also his lovable cluelessness. Both are extremely smart in some respects but mostly bafflingly idiotic in others, but that’s what makes both iterations of Frank Drebin the perfect cop in these circumstances.
Where Nielsen used the gentle and endearing manner which was key to his comedy, Neeson (woefully underused as a comedic actor—I point you to his short appearance in Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2) uses his later-career tough-guy gruffness to good effect, underscoring Frank’s inability to see the forest for the trees with this ballsy macho front. It’s a combination that pays off, especially considering the people (read: everyone) we see Frank having to put up with for the film’s duration. “Putting up with” seems to be the guiding star of Neeson’s particular portrayal, as he’s a well-meaning but rule-bending cop whose fight is with both criminals and even more new procedures and regulations, all of which seem to be amassing with every move he makes.
Director/co-writer Akiva Schaffer and co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand have created an alternate reality where everyone and everything is skewed; there are absolutely no straight characters in this movie at all. Not even Chief Davis (CCH Pounder), Frank’s superior, or his partner, Ed Hocken, Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) are immune from the sillies, seen undertaking actions that would result in immediate firings and possible jail time. The Los Angeles featured herein is full of wild characters pushing the limits of believability, but why would you look for believability in a Naked Gun movie? You’re here for the gags and the kind of wordplay that made The Naked Gun the hilarious franchise that it is, and with similarly warped films like Hot Rod, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers under his belt, Schaffer is a perfect choice to take The Naked Gun into the 21st century.
This film’s villain, an Elon Musk-coded billionaire tech mogul (again with the billionaire tech moguls, and on the same release day!), Richard Cane (Danny Huston), is as 21st century as it gets, using his wealth, status, and technology for his own nefarious form of world domination. However, there’s a fly in the ointment—a dead man’s sister, Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), who starts her own investigation after seeing how Frank, in his own open-and-shut idiom, considers her brother’s death a suicide. Similar to Frank and Jane Spencer’s (Priscilla Presley) relationship from the original films, there’s a terrific game of push and pull between these two, with both of them—as actors and characters—trying to outdo the other with how far they can go before results are obtained.
It’s astounding how well Neeson and Pamela Anderson play off each other. My goodness, may her career resurgence continue! 2024’s The Last Showgirl showed how capable she is as a dramatic actor, and The Naked Gun finds her holding her comedic own right alongside Neeson. Beth is probably the most straightforward character in the movie, but even she’s got her quirks, and Anderson rolls right along with what the script throws at her. She oscillates between being exaggerated versions of a femme fatale, a woman in love, and a damsel in distress with believable ease, and she makes Beth fit right into this weird reality where, among other things, snowmen come to life with murderous intentions.
The true test of a Naked Gun movie is in its ability to never make any of these outlandish events seem overtly outlandish or obviously referential. (I’m looking at you, Peter Segal, with your Beavis and Butt-Head gag in The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.) In this franchise, these kinds of occurrences should be treated like everyday happenstance—like a self-driving car being used as a murder weapon, the sudden appearance of a stand-in delivering lines, or a wardrobe malfunction going horribly wrong—and they can only work if offset with appropriate countermeasures. Putting too much weight on any particular gag, dialogue exchange, or punchline would cause us to lose our touch with a movie like this; it isn’t an outright parody, like the Leslie Nielsen-starring Dracula: Dead and Loving It or Spy Hard, movies that rely on weighted gags and pinpoint meta references. Akiva Schaffer knows this, and he wisely opts for more subtle pokes than outright spears, aiming to earn our laughs with good old-fashioned slapstick and reaping huge rewards. The Naked Gun doesn’t want to do anything but give us a good time and an escape from our present day, rolling constant laughs into its blessedly short runtime, as Schaffer knows anything longer would be overkill.
Oh, and lest you worry… a certain entertainer does keep his Naked Gun appearance streak intact.
