The reboot/requel of The Naked Gun begins with a bank robbery that, thanks to a music cue by Lorne Balfe, has echoes of The Dark Knight. Only this time the joker is not Heath Ledger, but Liam Neeson.
When it was first announced that Neeson would play the lead role, it is fair to say that a few eyebrows were raised. Others perhaps cast their minds back to an episode of Life’s Too Short, where Neeson pitched himself to Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant as wanting to branch out into comedic roles.
Here, Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. who finds that his investigations into an apparent suicide, and the recovery of a stolen Primordial Law Of Toughness device (yes, a literal P.L.O.T. device), are linked and lead him to cross paths with tech magnate Richard Kane (Danny Huston), and femme fatale Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson).
Early on in proceedings, while staring up at a picture of his father hung on the wall of Police Squad headquarters, Frank Drebin Jr. remarks that he “wants to be just like you, but different, and completely original”.
Similar to the gag made immediately afterwards, with a young man refusing to properly respect the photo of his Police Squad father, aka O.J. Simpson, this is a film that wants to walk its own path, but is smart enough to acknowledge the rather large (clown) shoes it needs to fill.
Leslie Nielsen was the deadest of deadpans, and while Neeson delivers a commendable performance, it is the scenes with Pamela Anderson that provide the most laughs. The highlight being an extended romantic interlude set to Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”. They have great chemistry together, and Anderson is a comedic revelation here. She is the true MVP of the film.
Although an unexpected but hilarious cameo poses an interesting “what if”, raising the question of how the movie could have looked if another actor had played the lead role.
The original series and movies succeeded due to their rapid-fire approach to comedy. Audiences faced a relentless barrage of wordplay and visual humour. The hit rate was always high, but if a joke didn’t quite land, it didn’t matter because there was another zinger coming right up behind it.
In this instalment, the jokes feel as though they are being fired out with the volume and accuracy of a Stormtrooper, and some of the gags do feel a bit tired, lazy, and cheap. For example, a gag about cops drinking coffee is repeated ad nauseam. This is disappointing given that it is co-written and directed by Akiva Schaffer. One third of The Lonely Island, and responsible for Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, one of the sharpest comedies and satires of the last ten years.
The film works best when it is spoofing the police procedurals that the original did. When it morphs into making fun of the bigger budget, fate-of-the-world action movies like Mission Impossible, then it starts to falter. The Naked Gun movies always worked best when the cases and threats were fairly small in scale. That is, if you can call trying to assassinate the Queen of England, or blowing up the Academy Awards, small.
All that being said, thankfully the film did not commit the cardinal sin of putting all the best jokes in the trailers. Plus, Neeson does indeed get his literal naked gun out… albeit pixelated.
The Naked Gun is found to be very guilty of man’s laughter, and does enough to merit the soft reboot of the franchise.
The Naked Gun is in cinemas from August 1
Rating: 
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Stars: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Danny Huston, Paul Walter Hauser
Runtime: 85 minutes
Country: USA
