‘The Naked Gun’: Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson Fire on All Cylinders in Year’s Funniest Comedy

Alci Rengifo

“The Naked Gun” is the real deal when it bills itself as a comedy. This movie’s sole aim is to make you laugh all the way until the end and that’s a very good thing. It’s the funniest film of the year. It is also this year’s best legacy sequel. You know what the term means by now. Hollywood is dusting off any hit or classic it can think of from the last four decades, rebooting them under the cloak of supposedly continuing their storylines. The original “The Naked Gun” from 1988, spun off the cancelled series “Police Squad,” is a true comedy classic. Its two sequels were worthy follow ups keeping alive its spirit of wit and downright absurdity that deliver one great joke after another. This new “Naked Gun” stands on its own, even as it nods at its predecessor, as a work that defines down to the core what being funny means.

Yes, like the original by David and Jerry Zucker, this is really a great parade of gags, but there is a central story. Lt. Frank Drebin Jr (Liam Neeson) is the son of Frank Drebin (the late Leslie Nielsen) from the first movies. He has certainly inherited his father’s goofball nature. His latest adventure in Los Angeles commences when a body is found in an electric car at the bottom of a lake. The driver turns out to have been the brother of Beth (Pamela Anderson), a blonde bombshell who strolls into Frank’s office and instantly steals his heart. Clues lead Frank and his partner, Ed Hocken Jr (Paul Walter Hauser), son of the first movies’ Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy), to the super rich Richard Cane (Danny Huston). The electric car tycoon is clearly a villain with a sinister plan involving world chaos ready to be unleashed.

This is merely the plot. The actual movie instantly kicks off with its blender full of references to the other movies, jokes ranging from crass to innocent to shamelessly dumb. Director Akiva Schaffer shoots the material with pitch perfect pacing, never losing momentum. He opens with a bank robbery riffing off all movie bank robberies. Lorne Balfe’s score clearly references Hans Zimmer’s music from “The Dark Knight.” Frank saves the day, by infiltrating the bank disguised as a little girl, except it is indeed a little girl with a lollipop until a “Mission: Impossible”-style reveal shows its Frank. Totally absurd but it works. This is the kind of movie where Frank and Ed are handed overly large coffee cups and noir language is shredded (“she had the kind of butt that would make a toilet seat beg for the brown”). The material is making fun of action movies, cop flicks and anything else it can think of, including certain electric car billionaires who want to rule the world. Liam Neeson is not only taking on a classic role, he’s mocking the kind of macho action star he himself has defined since “Taken.”

Neeson is a brilliant choice because he has the right presence to play the material straight, naturally bringing out the humor. Even when he’s doing a gag about Frank’s bodycam capturing a particular bodily emergency, Neeson never feels like he’s in on the joke. Leslie Nielsen was almost lovably odd. Neeson is playing off his screen persona of the no-nonsense hero. Danny Huston is having too much fun playing a mad villain who also falls for Beth, also masterfully delivering absurd lines with eloquence. Yet, the real revelation is Pamela Anderson. Her costume choices and character are homage to the femme fatale of the first films, played by Priscilla Presley, but she also stakes out her own memorable place. Anderson is less afraid to be truly hilarious and off the wall. She can play the likable ditz before breaking out into a scat performance onstage with a jazz band. The moment is comedy gold. Maybe this marks another step forward in a Pamela Anderson renaissance. She always had the keen sense for real comedy, and now that Anderson has broken free from the Playboy Bunny stereotyping of the ‘90s, hopefully she explores it even further.

Schaffer and the writing team are also aware “The Naked Gun” needs to address how the culture has changed since the early films, even if Frank insists on recording “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on his TiVo. He cracks boomer jokes about missing the old days when white male cops could get away with anything. When a bartender points out Frank shot his unarmed brother, Frank says it could be one of hundreds but remembers the name when the bartender mentions his brother is white. There’s even a rather ruthless joke nodding at how O.J. Simpson was part of the original “Naked Gun” lineup. Frank is too dim to be an open anti-hero however, considering he has the potential of ruining anyone’s day. He does so with lots of coffee, some of which is handed to him by an unidentified hand constantly entering the frame, even when he’s up in the air. Frank gets into fights with goons who then turn into a lineup of random people he punches out as a scoreboard keeps count. Film buffs will have fun pointing out the exhaustingly broad references to other movies like “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” and something as obscure as Spike Lee’s “25th Hour.”

Maybe the times are ripe for “The Naked Gun.” The world seems so scary and absurd these days that we need genuinely funny comedies that are cheerfully shallow yet quick. In real life no one would possibly believe someone’s last name ends with “spaghetti and meatballs,” but Danny Huston makes us believe it’s possible. His character’s plot to use a device that reduces populations to base animal instincts has surely crossed the mind of several actual villainous tycoons. It takes a real comedic director to then unleash the plan convincingly to the sounds of Enya’s “Only Time.” Watch out for a surveillance scene involving Frank, Beth and a turkey or the shiny disco balls at a sports game, and on and on. Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson pull it all off with the gusto of true masters, making this a real summer delight and one of the year’s best comedies. 

“The Naked Gun” releases Aug. 1 in theaters nationwide.