Liam Neeson in ‘The Naked Gun’
Paramount Pictures
It takes a bold man to step into the shoes of Leslie Nielsen, former Hollywood matinee idol (see how heroic and gallant he is in 1956’s Forbidden Planet!) and late-in-life comedic genius. Thank God — or rather, thank the holy trinity of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker — for Nielsen’s reinvention as keeper of the big-screen, charismatic-idiot flame. Even within Airplane‘s cast of fellow actors previously known for their gravitas, Nielsen proved himself as a first-rate boob. His deadpan was deadly. Naturally, it was a no-brainer to cast him as a parody of every self-serious TV detective in Police Squad, the ABC series which then begat The Naked Gun trilogy, which in turn gave us Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin in a full body-sized condom. A star was reborn.
So, yes, Nielsen had giant shoes — and Liam Neeson has just the freakishly gargantuan feet to fill them. If you remember the Oscar nominee’s declaration that he was rebranding himself as a comic actor in Extras, you know he’s got great timing and a sturdy sense of self-mockery to go along with that bowel-shaking baritone. The fact that life now imitates art is just one more wink-nudge joke. Seriously, after you’ve released krakens, saved jedis, killed hundreds of bad guys with your particular set of skills, and starred in Schindler’s List, what else is left but balls-out — like, literally balls-out — comedy? Plus he has the same initials as Leslie Nielsen. This was inevitable, people!
For the first half hour, Neeson’s reboot of The Naked Gun series is easily one of the most hilarious things to hit theaters in ages. The key to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team’s movies was a combo of quickness and relentlessness, throwing every single sight gag, double entendre, and sent-up cliché at you at warp speed. Double the velocity of their usual work and multiply the slapstick by 10, and that was the Naked Gun films’ standard cruising mph; you could barely catch your breath before Drebin said “Nice beaver” to a woman on a ladder, she produced a stuffed beaver, and you broke into hysterics again. Akiva Schaffer, director and nerdiest one-third (that’s a compliment, as podcast fans will note that the competition is stiff) of the Lonely Island, gets it. He’s not just a smart pick for something like this, he’s also clearly a fan, and is extremely reverent of the ZAZ rapid-fire irreverence. Along with his cowriters Doug Mand and Dan Gregor, Schaffer has loaded up an arsenal of fast and furious jokes that keep whizzing by you. The hit-to-miss ratio in that initial 30 minutes is impressive.
As is Neeson’s take on the heir apparent and resident swinging dick — again, expect to take this phrase literally here — of Police Squad. The fact that he’s played exactly this kind of role in loads of dead-serious dramas only makes his straight-faced take on Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.’s total ineptitude and Draconian sense of law enforcement that much funnier. The same goes for Pamela Anderson‘s slinky femme fatale-slash-woman-in-peril Beth Davenport, the sister of a man found dead in a car accident deemed a suicide. She’s decided she’s going to do some detective work of her own. Anderson compliments her leading man’s ridiculousness beautifully (there’s a scatting scene in a jazz club that demonstrates she’s equally willing to make a complete ass of herself). Ditto Danny Huston as a tech-bro bad guy who loves the Black Eyed Peas, Paul Walter Hauser as Drebin Jr.’s sidekick Ed Hocken Jr., and CCH Pounder as the squad’s stressed-out chief. “You can’t fight city hall!” she yells at her in-house loose cannon. “No, you can’t,” Drebin Jr. calmly replies. “It’s a building.”
Comedies are marathons, however, not just a series of sprints. Schaffer and his collaborators seem to sense that they can’t keep up the breakneck pace of the movie’s stellar first act for close to 90 minutes. So the pace slows down, allowing viewers to take in an extended gag involving Neeson and Anderson being watched by a thug via heat-seeking binoculars during a date, and a falling-in-love montage that turns into a stand-alone segment involving magical snowmen, threesomes, and slasher horror. Again, you are reminded that Schaffer is partially responsible for the group’s absurdist SNL digital shorts and 100 percent the guy who made Hot Rod.
And then things start to slow down even further, and further, and further. It’s almost as if there’s a fear of exhausting viewers with so much hilarity that they’re willing to risk potentially grinding things to a halt. By the time you get to the big climax at a UFC fight, you worry that a sort of comic lethargy, the kind that you associate with so many so-so comedies of the past 25 years, has permanently set in. Brilliant gags pop up here and there, yet the last two-thirds of this new Naked Gun feels like its exponentially limping to the finish line. If this is meant to be a proof of concept for Neeson to go from dramatic powerhouse to AARP-age action hero to full-on comedian, then yes, this is a bull’s-eye. If this reboot is meant to revitalize the beloved 1990s franchise, and by extension a long-lost type of shock comedy, then it’s shooting blanks.
From Rolling Stone US.
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