Police circle a bank filled with armed robbers and hostages. A young girl with a lollipop goes skipping in the front door — against the warnings of nearby officers. When questioned by a masked man with a gun, she pulls off a mask to reveal Liam Neeson’s face. Suddenly, the little girl is Liam Neeson in an ill-fitting school uniform — and a comical action scene ensues.
That’s the opening scene to a movie that’s actually really funny and good. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed “The Naked Gun.”
I’ve never seen the original three “Naked Gun” films and their associated television series. The new movie starring Neeson and Pamela Anderson hadn’t really been on my radar either. Fortunately, the idea of a mid-budget comedy film happened to appeal to me last week, and so I found myself having an absolute ball watching a pure comedy film that doesn’t resemble anything else in contemporary cinema. They just do not make them like “The Naked Gun” anymore.
Neeson stars as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the lead of the previous films, alongside Paul Walter Hauser as Ed Hocken Jr., the son of another dude from the previous films. They get drawn into a comical conspiracy to investigate Danny Huston’s Richard Cane — a supervillain clearly inspired by Elon Musk and other tech billionaires — when Pamela Anderson’s crime novelist Beth Davenport reports that her brother was murdered while driving his legally-distinct Tesla.
Cane wants to create a world inhabited only by billionaires using his P.L.O.T. Device, and against all odds Drebin Jr. is the only hope for humanity.
“The Naked Gun” is, perhaps surprisingly, very funny. The jokes flow in a constant stream and they hit consistently. There are recurring physical gags, there’s word play, there are bizarre cultural references and there’s incisive satire. “The Naked Gun” is an unironically good and interesting film and I just didn’t expect that when I sat down for the silly Liam Neeson-as-a-cop movie.
The direction by Akiva Schaffer, of the musical comedy group The Lonely Island and who previously directed the underrated 2021 “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” is sharp. The film frequently apes noir sensibilities from lighting to voice over, satirizes both police and masculinity, features a cameo appearance from Microsoft’s Clippy and is relentlessly goofy.
It’s also profoundly dumb. I loved it.
Anderson is a standout as Davenport, in action scenes, in a silly singing bit, and in a bizarre romantic vignette involving a magically animated snowman. Neeson absolutely owns the film as Drebin Jr. by playing every farcical bit and sequence wholly straight.
I’d love to see a return to actual straight comedies at the theater. “The Naked Gun” is a breath of fresh, silly air. It’s not going to leave anyone with a lot to chew on, but it’s a whole lot of fun in a niche too-long underserved. It’s playing this weekend.
On the Screen is a weekly film review column by Peninsula Clarion reporter Jake Dye. Reach him at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
