The Reel Review
Following in the footsteps of his legendary father, detective Frank Drebin Jr. attempts to solve a murder to save the beleaguered Los Angeles Police Department. Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson star in this reboot of the decades-old, classic comedy franchise.
Despite a nonstop cavalcade of slapstick and absurd humor, only a handful of the jokes land in this intentionally silly and stupid comedy – in particular, the car camera/chili dog bit, the infrared vision/dog bit, and the Bill Cosby spiked drink gag. Neeson and Anderson are actually both quite good and have excellent onscreen chemistry, with solid supporting performances from Danny Huston as the Elon Musk-inspired electric car billionaire/criminal mastermind, and Paul Walter Hauser (I, Tonya, Richard Jewell) as Drebin’s kid-unfriendly partner. It’s the flimsy, not-so-funny screenplay that is the problem.
Co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) keeps the pacing frenetic, but the film is just so boring. Even with only a few laughs, at least at just under an hour and a half, The Naked Gun only slightly overstays its welcome.
REEL FACTS
• Naked Gun co-creator David Zucker says years ago he co-wrote a script for a fourth film, a Jason Bourne/Mission Impossible spoof, in which Frank Drebin’s son was a security guard who gets mixed up with the CIA on a spy adventure. Zucker says he found out about this reboot when he read about it in the press. Zucker says, while he and director Akiva Schaffer are friends, he has no interest in seeing this reboot.
• Priscilla Presley and “Weird Al” Yankovic have cameos in the film, making them the only actors to appear in all four films of the Naked Gun franchise.
• The Naked Gun was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia.
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