The Naked Gun

4 outta 5

It has been quite a while since the last Naked Gun film, but the franchise has laid dormant for so long probably because it was tied up with the iconic performance of Leslie Nielsen. He is great and those movies are great, as they are dumb but consistently hilarious. Getting Liam Neeson as a replacement for Frank Drebin in the series works perfectly. This Naked Gun captures the tone of the originals, with rapid-fire jokes, one liners and weirdness. With most comedies banished to disappear in streaming, and very fun non-stop gags, this is an awesome return to the series and worthy of the name.

Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson) is a good cop on Police Squad who always gets his man, even if he shoots too many people. Frank and his partner, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), are investigating a mysterious death and into Frank’s office walks the beautiful Beth (Pamela Anderson), who says the murdered victim was her brother. This leads them to tech mogul Crane (Danny Huston) who is secretly trying to bring about destruction that will only benefit billionaires. Drebin’s boss, Davis (CCH Pounder) is sick of his wild gun ways, telling Frank he can’t anger one of the most important people in the city. Meanwhile, Frank grows closer to Beth, but Crane wants the detective gone by any means necessary.

In a piece of franchise continuity, Neeson is playing Frank Drebin Jr., and in the third film Jane (Priscilla Presley), gives birth. Now that movie came out in 1994 and Liam Neeson certainly isn’t 31, but it’s kind of a funny in-continuity gag in a series with no consistent in-continuity. This film really doesn’t take a lot of plot pieces from the first three movies, but there are some nods. The original film had a mind-control device the bad guy could switch on individuals, and here the bad guy is using a mind control device to send society into a killing frenzy. A great in-joke is that “Weird Al” Yankovic in every Naked Gun movie, and he has one of his biggest roles here as the entertainment for the billionaire bunker that will wait out the crazed masses. There’s a great gag where it is revealed that everyone at Police Squad is the son of a main character from the original trilogy and the reference to Nordberg/O.J. is hilarious. One moment has Frank on the phone with his mom while fighting bad guys and later there is even a single shot cameo by Presley which keeps this film in the series.

Neeson makes for a good successor to Nielsen as both play it completely straight which makes the silly things funnier. There are a few times where Neeson does some dumb things, like an extended bit about him eating a chili dog that doesn’t agree with his stomach that gets more ridiculous. One time he walks into a crime scene as there are notes for him to frame himself which he happily obliges with, even picking up a tape recorder and saying, “I did it!” He has good chemistry with Anderson’s Beth, and there’s a funny montage of them having fun together, a callback to the origial film, but they bring a snowman they bring to life with wizardry, engage in a three-way tryst and then it tries to kill them. Anderson also gets in an unexpected moment when she starts doing jazz scatting that is intercut with Frank beating up on some goons which is an amusing soundtrack.

Hauser as Ed the sidekick has some great bits like getting beat up by a smart car, or when he starts absentmindedly giving out free beer, although his asides aren’t quite as good as Ed was in the original films. Pounder as the Chief has an amazing running gag where she is always with her husband who is trying to get some sleep, even in a public arena he’s in pyjamas and wearing a sleep mask. Huston’s villain Crane has some funny bits, like when he references the original ofensive title of Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get it Started in Here”, or when he gets into a fight with Drebin and immediately starts crying after being hit.

What makes this worth of the Naked Gun series is the constant stream of bizarre jokes. Frank has strange bits like talking about his dead wife and then goes on about how she was a great football player, or when he gets angry that Beth inadvertently erased the entire run of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer from his TiVo. There are some fun running gags like how the cops are always getting increasingly larger cups of coffee. Like a good Naked Gun movie, there are background gags that draw attention away from someone talking. And there’s a whole lot of fun, extended bizarre moments like when the end credits roll and Frank and Ben feel like they’re stuck in a frozen hell. Or an amazing joke where Frank is in an out-of-control car, shoots out the front window, and then somehow the car is filled with bees and balloons, and then a new windshield slaps onto the front, sealing him in. This is a hysterical Naked Gun move in a series that has been away from theatres for too long.