By Sandra Hall
THE NAKED GUN ★★★
(M) 85 minutes
The new reboot of the Naked Gun franchise begins as it means to go on, with Liam Neeson single-handedly beating up a gang of bank robbers while disguised as a schoolgirl.
Liam Neeson joins the Police Squad as Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun.Credit:
There’s no doubt about his enthusiasm for sending up his image as an action hero. Dignity and vanity are gleefully sacrificed to the tradition of silliness established by Leslie Nielsen in the role of that rock-jawed lawman Frank Drebin in the earlier Naked Gun films and Police Squad TV series.
The tone for the new film was set during its publicity campaign when Neeson, playing Frank Jr, recorded an eloquent plea in praise of comedy movies, fearing they were on the verge of extinction. It was heartfelt. He even remained straight-faced during the concluding fart.
Bodily function jokes of all varieties are joyfully perpetrated in the film, too. And Neeson’s co-star Pamela Anderson sportingly executes her share of pratfalls. She even joins a jazz group to make a brave attempt at scat-singing, sounding like a deranged cockatoo.
Wearing a beret and a trench coat, she’s cast as Beth Davenport, a crime novelist intent on solving her brother’s murder. The film is not exactly a whodunit, however. At the first sight of Danny Huston, who never plays anything but villains, the jig is up.
Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport, a crime novelist, who teams up with Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin. Credit:
The remaining questions are how and why, and Frank Jr takes an inordinate time to come up with answers, partly because he’s suspended from Police Squad over the bank-robbing episode. The reasons are unclear but it does give him a chance to get together with Beth, sweeping her off to the snow country and the film’s most bizarre sequence – an encounter with a randy snowman who hops into bed with them.
At this point you may start to feel that the director, Akiva Schaffer, is trying just a little too hard. Even when everybody is dutifully playing deadpan, silliness is an ephemeral art. Let me count the ways in which you can knock yourself out by coming up against a closed door. Not many.
I lost patience long before the climax, which fizzles to an underpowered ending.
Nonetheless, the script does its best to give us something in tune with the times. Huston is a very contemporary villain – an Elon Musk-Peter Thiel-type tech tycoon with despotic ambitions. In an effort to ingratiate himself with Police Squad he donates one of his electric cars to the force and, naturally, Frank Jr is its first driver, creating such havoc that it’s difficult to say whether he’s more dangerous when asleep at the wheel or fully awake and totally bewildered.
There are certainly laughs to be had from all this, and you have to admire Neeson for getting back in touch with his inner adolescent and playing the clown with such zest. He’s effectively put an end to his days in action movies. But now that he’s 73, this may be the way he wants it.
The Naked Gun is released in cinemas on August 21.
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