The Naked Gun – REVIEW

“The law’s reach never stretched this far.”


Director: Akiva Schaffer
Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, CCH Pounder, and Danny Huston
Synopsis: “Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr becomes a police officer like his legendary father and must save the police department from shutting down by solving a case.”

__________________________________________________


It’s nice to laugh every once in a while. It’s even better to laugh incredibly often, and that doesn’t really happen these days. By all accounts, that’s mainly because big budget studio comedies don’t really happen anymore. Sure, we’ve got the smaller ones or the ones made for streaming, but that’s not cutting it anymore. The spoof comedies, or the ones with really dumb jokes that got run into the ground in the mid-2000s, used to fill in that gap. Airplane, the original Naked Gun movies, Scary Movie (which is making its own comeback next year), and Mel Brooks comedies like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein all used to do big business. Like fashion trends, Hollywood runs in circles, which explains why parachute pants will apparently have a big part to play in Avengers: Doomsday (if my inside source is correct). It’s a miracle that not only is The Naked Gun actually a fun time, but nearly every joke landed for me. Comedy can also be the most subjective of all genres: you either laugh or you don’t. These parody comedies are right up my alley, which is saying something, because my alley is usually full of raccoons, broken bikes, and that one guy who keeps shouting at me about soup. Liam Neeson, seemingly cast because his name looks like Leslie Nielsen if you squint hard enough, is the perfect fit for this sort of comedy. His “play it straight” attitude for most of his roles is the only way you could make The Naked Gun work. There’s a reason why he got a whole trilogy off of a threatening phone call. Pamela Anderson makes for a great match with Neeson, and their chemistry is great. It’s like Mentos and Coke, only slightly less messy. That can’t fuel a stupid comedy alone, though. For The Naked Gun, there’s only one job here: make the audience laugh as much as possible. No joke is too dumb, and nothing is too stupid. Director Akiva Schaffer and producer Seth MacFarlane absolutely understood the assignment and stuff as many one-liners, background gags, visual humor, puns, pop culture references, literally anything they can put into an 85 minute movie. It’s like shoving a group of college students in an Uber. They’re all wasted, but we can get all eight of them in that Kia Soul. And since comedy is, once again, subjective, I think they did their job. I’d say that you gotta run to the theater, but I won’t for two reasons. One: it’s probably not in theaters anymore, it’s been out for a while. Two: It’s a building, you could get hurt. Trust me, I tried. The building won. Easily.


Ryan’s Grade: B+