THE STORY – Following in the footsteps of his bumbling father, Detective Frank Drebin Jr. must solve a murder case to prevent the police department from shutting down.
THE CAST – Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu & Danny Huston
THE TEAM – Akiva Schaffer (Director/Writer), Dan Gregor & Doug Mand (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 85 Minutes
With the glory days of Zucker/Abrams/Zucker long behind us, good cinematic spoofs have gotten rarer and rarer. The comedic filmmaking trio dominated the ‘80s between “Airplane!”, “Top Secret!”, and “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”, the latter of which spawned two sequels in the early 1990s. Now, three decades after that trilogy wrapped up, The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer has resurrected the franchise for the legacy sequel treatment. Liam Neeson stars as Lt. Frank Drebin, Jr., son of original series star Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin. He’s your typical cop who doesn’t play by the rules, and the Police Squad Chief (CCH Pounder) has just about had it with him. She throws him and his partner, Capt. Ed Hocken, Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), after a high-profile investigation, sticks them on traffic duty, but their first crash looks suspicious enough that Drebin starts to investigate tech mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston). With a target on his back and a hot blonde (the car crash victim’s sister, played by Pamela Anderson) on his arm, Drebin will have to call upon all his skills if he wants to crack the case.
Part of the fun of the original “Naked Gun” films is Nielsen’s legendary deadpan as he inadvertently causes chaos all around him. By playing the role deathly straight, Nielsen showed the ridiculousness of the old-school hard-boiled detective persona and how useless and out-of-date that brand of ultra-masculinity was. While that was largely subtext in the original, here it’s outright textual, with both Drebin and Cane musing about how much better things were back in their day and how they don’t make men like them anymore. There’s even a fantastic gag where, upon watching the bodacious Beth walk away, Drebin finds his inner Raymond Chandler monologue interrupted and usurped by the other members of Police Squad, each of the old detectives thinking they’re special when really, they’re all alike. Schaffer and co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand similarly throw subtext out the window when it comes to Cane’s dastardly plot (which itself serves as a nod to the first film), turning the subtext of what’s happening in the real world (people spreading hate and sowing discord through their devices) into the film’s text.
The film may lack subtlety when it comes to its themes, but subtlety has no place in a comedy this broad. And what a broad! Scheduling conflicts may have scuttled her participation in the last “Naked Gun” movie, “The Final Insult,” but Pamela Anderson finally made her way to the franchise, and the wait was worth it. Playing the requisite femme fatale is nothing new for Anderson. Still, the effort she poured into her Golden Globe-nominated performance in “The Last Showgirl” is also present here, visible in the warm humanity she invests in the character as well as her displays of comedic chops (her impromptu performance at a jazz club is explosively funny). She also has incredible chemistry with Neeson, who couldn’t be better as Drebin. The actor’s natural gravitas and hulking screen presence have gotten quite the workout headlining schlocky action movies in recent years, which is the perfect preparation for this role. Neeson even allows himself to look much more like a tired old man during the action sequences, making the action scenes look that much more ridiculous. As Nielsen did, Neeson plays it straight, as if he were playing Philip Marlowe, trusting that this intonation is all the script needs to be funny.
Thankfully, Schaffer & Co.’s screenplay is full to bursting with jokes of all kinds, running the gamut from incredibly stupid to incredibly niche to incredibly clever, and never stops at one punchline when two or three more will do. The Chandler-esque dialogue is dead-on, and the extremely literal humor that was a ZAZ staple kills. The visual gags, though, are downright inspired, from the multiple bits with Drebin and Hocken’s coffee cups to the giant crane to the opening scene reveal of the “Primordial Law Of Toughness Device” (go ahead, spell out the acronym) that serves as the film’s MacGuffin. Not every joke lands, and when they don’t, the film can feel flimsy and hacky as a result. However, there’s always another joke lying in wait, and there are so many of them that Schaffer can afford to space the best ones out, even managing to save one of the film’s best jokes for the end credits.
The one place where Schaffer can’t quite shake the worst habits of modern comedies is in the film’s bland visual identity. Even that works in strange ways, though, as the film looks like the modern versions of the films it’s spoofing. Not many crime dramas have unique, eye-popping visuals, and while this doesn’t either, at least it does have some hilarious surprises in store for its action sequences. In every other way, though, Schaffer’s “The Naked Gun” proves not only that spoofs still can be funny, but that contemporary comedies don’t have to be two hours of comedians improvising stand-up bits at each other. The tight scripting and short running time of “The Naked Gun” give you more bang for your buck than any superhero spectacular. Cinematic comedy has never been so back.
