Review: The Jokes Come Thick and Fast in ‘The Naked Gun’

Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is a very important man. The hottest cop in the Police Squad, he’s a walking civil rights violation who can kill a man with his own tooth. But his loose cannon ways are giving his boss a migraine, so he’s shoved onto a new case involving a possible suicide. It’s all cut and dry until a gorgeous dame (Pamela Anderson) turns up and complicates things. Well, that and an obviously maniacal tech billionaire (Danny Huston) who likes self-driving cars, plans for world domination, and red-light therapy on his testicles.

Hollywood has been trying to get a remake of the classic spoof The Naked Gun off the ground for most of the 21st century. Now that legacy sequels are apparently the bedrock of the entertainment world, the timing was right for a new generation of Drebins to mock the world. Studio comedies are old hat, apparently, and we just don’t get major releases for movies like this anymore. I wouldn’t have thought that was much of a shame before I saw The Naked Gun, but honestly, this movie kind of rocks. Yes, it’s really funny.

Director Akiva Schaffer of The Lonely Island knows a thing or two about excellent parody movies thanks to the sickeningly underrated Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and he and his regular writing team of Dan Gregor (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) and Doug Mand are clearly fans of the original Police Squad! and its movie sequels. They know the formula for a successful Naked Gun: throw everything at the wall and don’t give the audience time to breathe. If a joke doesn’t work then it’s okay because another will be along three seconds later. There are sight gags, puns, background bits you’ll easily miss on the first viewing, pop culture jokes, and absurdity that feels straight out of Adult Swim. One scene involving a romantic getaway in a ski chalet takes a hard turn into Too Many Cooks territory that made me outright cackle.

Largely, the humour feels like it wouldn’t have been out of place in the Leslie Nielsen era. Think of gags like, “UCLA?” “I see L.A. every day. I live here,” or, “How did she pass?” “Great, 50 yards easily.” You know where the joke is going and you still laugh because the deadpan faux-noir delivery is spot on. Neeson is game for mocking his late-career resurgence as a mumbly action hero with an obscene body count. The movie isn’t as parodic of his Taken persona as you might expect, a few OTT action pieces aside. All of the cop drama tropes have more in common with the stuff the original movies mocked in the ’80s than the current era of Dick Wolf and 9-1-1: Lone Star (in fairness, parodying the latter might be impossible.) A missed opportunity? Perhaps, although the moments where the movie does prod at the issues of a gun-happy cop who has lost count of the innocent civilians he’s shot in the back (but remembers the name of the only white guy he did it to) offered a pitch-black humour that the movie simply wasn’t aiming for. That’s a Danny McBride project, not a Naked Gun movie.

The commitment to silliness means that Schaffer and company aren’t interested in anything too modern. Yes, the villain is obviously a Musk-esque tech-bro, but Danny Huston doesn’t play him as such. All of the pop culture jokes are about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Black Eyed Peas, and Janet Jackson at the Super-Bowl, the stuff of pure Gen-X and elder millennial catnip that giddily goes over the heads of anyone under 30. They often feel like remnants of a script draft from a decade prior, but again, there are sixteen jokes in the next two minutes vying for your attention so you move on.

It’s tempting to just list the jokes that made me laugh the hardest, like that one annoying guy at the bar who’s drunkenly trying to recite an episode of The Simpsons, but I’ll save you that pleasure. This is a comedy that works: short, tight, fast, and efficient (that’s what she said.) Neeson knows what he’s doing, but so does Pamela Anderson, who finally gets a great opportunity to show off her comedic muscles. One scene involving scat singing is especially daffy (and yes, her chemistry with Neeson is fire.) CCH Pounder is in fine “what other errands do you have us RUNNIN’ FOR THE DA?” mode as the no-nonsense police chief. Shout out to the coffee cups, the hardest workers on this production.

The Naked Gun should have been a cheap nostalgic cash-in, but it’s a more effortful slice of smart stupidity that is offering audiences something we just don’t have enough of in pop culture right now: consistent laughs with a budget. Give yourself over and be proudly charged with man’s laughter.

The Naked Gun is in cinemas now.