The Naked Gun is not only a faithful recreation of the original films' but also wildly hilarious in its own right.
Listen at the podcast providers of your choice.
If you're like me, you've probably been yearning for more live-action comedies in theaters. I don't want another show to watch. I don't want a kids movie that has jokes. Just give me a bunch of silliness for about 80 minutes so I can laugh my head off and enjoy myself. And if you could make it an utter farce, in the vein of Airplane or Mel Brooks' movies even better. Shrewdly enough, this has been the selling point for The Naked Gun, a reboot/re-imagining of the Leslie Nielsen franchise that has even made fake PSAs about "saving comedies," with their leading man Liam Neeson. But all of that doesn't really matter if the movie isn't funny. Thankfully, The Naked Gun is easily the funniest movie I've seen all year.
The Setup
Neeson stars as Frank Drebin Jr., son of the famed Police Squad officer Frank Drebin, who's just been reassigned due to legal ramifications of his over-the-top police antics. But Frank is quickly pulled back into a homicide case that might unravel a larger conspiracy and give Frank a chance at love again, with a murder victim's sister.
There's a general truism that it can be really difficult to review a great comedy. Especially one that's built on a jenga tower of gags like this one is. Doubly so if you realize and remember that they don't really make movies like this anymore (aka over-the-top silly as hell movies) so there's a danger that you might be hyping up a movie because you miss the general vibe.
Thankfully The Naked Gun offers up a lot of fun selling points or things that make it stand out.
Fun Element #1: An Updated Recreation of The Naked Gun Vibe
Something that's hard to recreate in a trailer or demonstrate with spoiling some of the movie's best/funniest sequences, is what a Naked Gun movie looks and feels like. In look, there's been a clear shift in the visuals to modern crime/cop/action movies. Which makes sense because that's the kind of movie we're satirizing, so let's make it look and feel like a modern cop movie. So while the original Naked Gun movies were going after police detective shows of its era and noir, this is taking aim at basically the entire crime conspiracy genre with a plot that would be more at home in a Mission Impossible movie. It's a nice escalation.
But in style this is all "as many jokes as humanly possible into every minute of screentime," that old fans have come to expect from movies like The Naked Gun.
But in style this is all "as many jokes as humanly possible into every minute of screentime," that old fans have come to expect from movies like The Naked Gun.
So in a single scene you'll go from visual gag, to wordplay, to voice over joke, to another visual gag and on and on and on and on. There's no let up. And done right it means that even the small jokes can land way harder than you'd expect because it's not one joke by itself, it's a follow-up joke to the seven jokes before it.
This is also why the movie works best at its brisk 80 some minute runtime. You ensure you never lose joke momentum, you can keep the ones that really work, and you avoid the trap of certain gags running too long. There's no perfect runtime for any movie, but where you're a comedy that's this rapid fire without an edge of seriousness, this is a sweet spot.
This is also why the movie works best at its brisk 80 some minute runtime. You ensure you never lose joke momentum, you can keep the ones that really work, and you avoid the trap of certain gags running too long. There's no perfect runtime for any movie, but where you're a comedy that's this rapid fire without an edge of seriousness, this is a sweet spot.
The other piece of continuity from the old movies is that the entire cast is playing everything 100% straight. Liam Neeson has given a few interviews leading up to the movie saying that he told himself not to try to be funny, just act as seriously as possible regardless of whatever silly thing he's doing or saying. Which is not only exactly why the Leslie Nielsen movies work, but also works doubly with Neeson's long-established on-screen image of hyper-competent bad-ass.
The movie doesn't need this, but it really feels like Neeson is taking the piss out of the last 20 years of his movie career, which is an added layer of metatextual fun for movie fiends like myself.
The movie doesn't need this, but it really feels like Neeson is taking the piss out of the last 20 years of his movie career, which is an added layer of metatextual fun for movie fiends like myself.
Fun Element #2: A Cast of Older/Character Actors
This entire cast is an absolute riot, whether it's Neeson giving the funniest performance of his career, Pamela Anderson demonstrating some real comedic chops that also playfully tease her longtime public image as a sexpot, and great supporting turns from Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, CCH Pounder and Danny Huston as our villain.
What stands amongst that group is...these are all older established actors who have played these kinds of roles before. Which not only means they have all played the kind of roles that are being made fun of, it also adds an added level of silliness to the proceedings. A "look at all of these middle aged people just hamming it up." And as an added bonus you keep your budget down by not focusing on big/known names or young people to make your absurd world feel lived in.
Fun Element #3: Solid Nods to Cop Problems
Something I've alluded to in my recent review of modern cop or crime movies is that they all have to engage with modern sensibilities and issues the general populace have with the police. This includes ongoing issues with excessive or lethal force being used, racist tactics and actions and the lack of consequences for "bad" cops.
While The Naked Gun isn't exactly the franchise to ruthlessly skewer cops or the concept of policing for 80 minutes, there is a satirical edge to the movie whether it's Frank's ongoing issues with Internal Affairs who, rightly, identify that Frank is a menace to general public who constantly resorts to violence and a number of haymaker jokes about faults with American policing.
Something I really liked as well is how the movie has it's cake and eats it too when it comes to action beats. The movie is definitely a send-up of action heavy cop movies, but instead of giving Neeson and company a series of firefights, almost everything in this movie is an extended Looney Tunes styled fight scene with the camera movement of a modern action movie and the old gags of a cartoon.
The Verdict: An Absolute Blast
A laugh riot from start to finish, The Naked Gun is not only a faithful recreation of the original films' but also wildly hilarious in its own right. 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment