REVIEW:
Against all odds, the Liam Neeson Naked Gun reboot / legacy sequel turned out to be a pretty good movie. Nothing special, of course, but a film that was certainly in line with the other Naked Gun movies and fit right in alongside them, which is pretty much all you can ask for. All this is to say that the original three Naked Gun films were never anything great. But they were fun spoofs of the police movie genre, with jokes that were constantly hit or miss.
Leslie Neilson starred in those movies as Frank Drebbin, and Liam Neeson (I love that they got an actor with a similar sounding name,) this time around plays Drebbin’s son. He’s working a case where they target a billionaire tech mogul, along with his straight man partner, the great Paul Walter Hauser. Now there’s an actor who knows how to pick roles, ever since his breakthrough in Richard Jewel.
The two of them make every humorous mistake imaginable. This includes physical gags like falling down a flight of stairs or destroying the wall of a prison so that all of the inmates escape. But it also includes realistic and relatable situations, such as having to use the bathroom so badly that you can’t jet anything get in your way. While spoofing police body cam footage, we watch Neeson in this situation as he rushes into a coffee shop with a line for the bathroom, pulls out his gun, and starts firing into the air, to get to the front of the line.
Pamela Anderson is also on board here, as the love interest, and she’s remarkably good. Anderson was never known for her acting ability, but she’s going all out with this one, taking some big risks and chances and boy do they pay off. A scene where she jumps on stage at a night club dvd starts be bopping and free style scatting all over the place, in the most ridiculous manner, is especially impressive.
The story here isn’t anything special, and the jokes really only land about half the time or so, but it’s enough. Considering how far comedy has fallen these days and how we don’t even really get comedy movies in theaters anymore, any movie that is moderately funny is good enough. We went through an interesting time in comedy over the past few decades. First there was the Frat Pack of guys like Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, and Ben Stiller. Then we got the Apatow party, which was the height of the modern day comedy genre with movies like Knocked Up and Superbad. And now, we are definitely in a comedy slump. The new Naked Gun movie isn’t anything great, but it is certainly good and funny, and worthy of a handful of laughs. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.