The Naked Gun delivers a laugh-out-loud return to classic spoof comedy
Oh hell yes, give me more genre diversity in my movies, please and thank you!
The Naked Gun is a pleasant palette cleanser in a movie ecosystem that’s sadly shifted from ‘[insert genre] movies are a joke’ to ‘[insert genre] movies with some jokes’. This is a straightforward, no-frills comedy movie where its whole purpose is to get dumb laughs. It even clocks in at a lean 85 minutes, which is much welcome during a time where movie runtimes seem to be at least 120 minutes.
Liam Neeson plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of Frank Drebin (RIP Leslie Nielsen) from the original Naked Gun movies, a professional “Bad Guy Catcher” who works at the local ‘Police Squad’. Whereas Drebin Sr. is bumbling and out of his depth, Drebin Jr. is masculinity personified with an addiction to dirty chilli dogs and coffee (he’s always being handed a cup, whether he’s in the office or driving down a highway at speed).
Look, there is technically a plot, but it’s not really important. For the sake of context, I’ll do my due diligence.
There’s been a murder, and Drebin Jr. has to solve it. Along the way, he encounters a femme-fatale type (a great Pamela Anderson), talks shop with his pal Captain Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser, who is sadly a bit underutilised), and antagonises an evil billionaire (Danny Huston) with a blonde henchman (Kevin Durand). Oh, and there a plenty of great cameos, which I won’t spoil here.
The key to a good Naked Gun movie (and most spoof movies, really) is to cast great dramatic actors to play each role straight and let the situations drive the comedy. That’s why Neeson’s casting is pitch perfect. His late career on-screen tough-guy persona is so ridiculous that he can just do his Taken performance, and it’ll still be funny. Combine Neeson’s gravelly-voiced delivery of stupid lines with Anderson, Hauser, and Huston all acting straight in a world that is anything but, and there’s comedy gold to be mined.
The movie is stuffed to the brim with the dumbest lines and sight gags I’ve seen in years, many of which drew at least a chuckle. Does it all make sense? Definitely not. Is it entertaining? Most certainly, and that’s ultimately the winning ticket.
It’s tough to critique comedy movies because what one finds funny is so subjective. Not everyone will think Liam Neeson shitting himself or wearing pink strawberry underwear is funny. But you have to give kudos to The Naked Gun for, ahem, shooting its shot because director Akiva Schaffer knows exactly what he’s aiming for.
This is a throwback to the days of joke-a-minute delivery systems, where you just turn your brain off and enjoy the ride. Some will hit, some won’t, but you’ll at least find some parts funny. I was hoping The Naked Gun was at least 20 per cent funnier than it was, but the rest of my theatre was howling with laughter so what do I know about what is funny and what isn’t.
I do honestly think that the biggest offender in the lack of pure comedy movies being made these days is due to the rise of comic book movies, particularly Marvel and James Gunn-coded fare. Why go see a pure comedy movie for laughs when comic book blockbusters can give you enough quippy lines to elicit a chuckle and plenty of spectacle to go with it? It’s min-maxing taken to the next level at the expense of the movie experience.
You can question The Naked Gun’s barely-there plot, the gags, and the basic logic of this wacky world. But at the end of the day, this is a movie that exists to be stupid and encourages you to laugh along with – and at – it. Just one last word of advice: try to go in knowing as little as possible; it’ll make the experience much more enjoyable.