The Naked Gun

Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a good old-fashioned laugh-out-loud comedy.  You know, the silly, slapstick kind that Mel Brooks and the Zucker Brothers used to make?  Where we’d pay money to sit in a crowded theatre with others – and just laugh?  Silly one-liners, play-on-words, dumb puns, and sight gags?  Those were the days!  And Hollywood just doesn’t churn out comedies the way they used to.  Even today’s romantic comedies are more romantic than comedy.

New reboot

But now here comes director (and former SNL cast writer) Akiva Schaffer with his reboot of the old Zucker Brothers’ series, “The Naked Gun.”  The original 1980s & 90s films were themselves derivatives of “Police Squad,” their short-lived 1982 television series.  The old “Naked Gun” franchise starred the overly serious character actor Leslie Nielsen as the hopelessly incompetent LAPD detective Frank Drebin, who botches every investigation yet somehow manages to always catch the bad guy – a la Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau character from Blake Edwards’ “Pink Panther” series.

Liam Neeson in the lead role

This go-‘round, the equally serious Liam Neeson plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of the old Nielsen character.  And Neeson plays the role to the hilt.  If anything, Nielsen hammed up the old films a little too much; he’d practically wink at the camera during some of the most egregious material.  But Neeson plays it straight from the opening credits to the end.  And the fact that he plays it so straight is the most endearing aspect of the new “Naked Gun.”

Also strong is Pamela Anderson as the femme fatale, playing into her dumb blonde persona, but actually turning out to be the smartest person of the entire proceedings.  She practically solves the case for Drebin.

Too much plot

Where “The Naked Gun” goes awry is in the plot itself.  First, there’s simply too much plot here.  The original “Naked Gun” and “Pink Panther” films featured just enough plot to string together the comedic pratfalls and sight gags.  But this screenplay (by Schaffer, along with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand) features so much plot we find ourselves trying to remember all the twists and turns of the story rather than enjoying the comedy.

And perhaps because of this over-reliance on plot, the simple comedic moments are too far and few.  There’s a great line early on, when Anderson first meets with Drebin in his office.  He asks her to take a chair; to which she replies, “No thanks, I have plenty at home.”  I wish there had been more of these amusing comic moments in “The Naked Gun,” but I left the theatre pining for more.

Over-the-top

Instead, we get a series of over-the-top car crashes and explosions more akin to a superhero movie than a “Naked Gun” comedy.  Plus, there are too many “rude and crude” gags better suited to an Austin Powers flick than “The Naked Gun.”  I’m not saying Schaffer should have exactly recreated one of the original films, but he leaves the blueprint behind and takes this series to a whole other level – where it just doesn’t belong.

Schaffer has done to “The Naked Gun” what Brian DePalma did with “Mission: Impossible” in his 1996 adaptation.  He completely left the television series behind, instead creating a spider-web plot based on world domination – more suited to a James Bond film than the tight little TV show upon which it was supposedly based.

Eliminating the human race

Same with the new “Naked Gun.”  The complex plot revolves around a wealthy tech entrepreneur named Richard Cane, played by Danny Huston, whose desire is to use everyone’s cell phones to somehow revert them back to the barbaric nature of early man – causing everyone to kill each other, thereby eliminating the human race, save for Cane and his chosen survivor buddies who plan to hole up in an isolated bunker while the ”human elimination” occurs.

This is way over the top for a “Naked Gun” plot.  “The Naked Gun” (and “Police Squad”) was always at its funniest when the plots were simple, such as when Drebin would investigate petty crime.  Heck, one of Sellers’ best moments as Inspector Clouseau was when he fell for the decoy of a street vendor performing without a license while a robbery occurred within his eyesight.  Simple.  Funny.  Sadly lacking here.

Just scrap the connection

Schaffer would have been better off to completely scrap any connection between the old Zucker Brothers’ films and his.  Neeson could still play a bumbling LAPD investigator, but don’t name him after the beloved Leslie Nielsen character.  Too much time has passed, and this film is simply too different to warrant any relation between the two franchises.

Still longing for slapstick comedy

My problem is that after the new “Naked Gun,” I’m still longing for a good old-fashioned laugh-out-loud comedy.  I need an “Airplane,” or a “Young Frankenstein.”  In these serious, polarized times, we could all use a good laugh.  Is anyone in Hollywood listening?

 

 

 

 

 

Andy Ray‘s reviews also appear on https://townepost.com/