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Liam Neeson in a remake of the Naked Gun? You bet.
Yes, that Liam Neeson. The man who signed his name to the cultural zeitgeist with the words “I have a very particular set of skills” deliciously gets out of his element in a world of farce and surreality. He’s Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the direct heir to Leslie Nielsen’s original (and ostentatiously clueless) Frank Drebin Sr. Apparently humorously incurable cluelessness runs in the family.
Neeson, to his credit, goes big time, injecting his characteristic heaviness into deadpan humor that shouldn’t work but does. But even as he nails the routine of the “man in a serious world who’s doing something completely crazy,” he never quite achieves the cartoon innocence that gave Nielsen his legendary status. But still, watching Neeson play the straight guy and dispense crazed pronouncements just as chaos erupts around him remains a comic asset we never knew we needed.
Directed chaos, 80s fever dream-like
This reimagining, directed by Akiva Schaffer and co-penned by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, is what happens when you take Beverly Hills Cop and The Terminator and Airplane!, and then add a healthy dose of straight slapstick. See in mind sight gags and sidesplitting voiceover work and Zucker brothers tribute so over the top it shouldn’t work but do.
Plot? Ho ho ho, there’s one hidden between all the craziness. Frank Jr., still obsessed with his deceased dad’s name (literally and emotionally and possibly spiritually as well in confessions to possibly his dad’s ghost), dives into the corpse-involving case with an electric car and Danny Huston in greasy Musk-like tech bro mode. Of course.
Cast Paul Walter Hauser as Capt. Ed Hocken Jr. (because this show requires nepotistic callbacks) and Pamela Anderson as Frank’s love interest, and the pot boils over with absurdity. Their “meet-cute?” An outrageously offensive speech Frank makes about her. ahem. “assets,” and the audience roars and is vicariously embarrassed all simultaneously. Comedy gold.
Wham videos and Oedipal burdens
One of the laugh-out-grin-out moments? A Wham-like music montage of ski lodges,sixties style jumpsuits and all the neon to light up Times Square. It’s completely extraneous and that’s why we like it all the more. If it tickles us more than we care to confess to, check our humor.
There also references galore, ranging from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sex and the City. And an O.J. Simpson reference that gets a few grimaces or two out of you. Goodness yes, they do that. The film overall comes out of the gate as a nostalgia piñata that got swung just a fraction too hard.
Activity? Yes. Sense? Not so much.
What follows is screamin’ deliciously crazy as planned. There’s even a scene where impossibly people stand in perfect line in line for some black-humor bloodbath. Picture Airplane!, but with the hyper zip of the modern state of attention. Stupid? Diabolically so. But the whole shebang works anyway.
Do we need it? Not. Do we enjoy it? Yes.
Longer-term, this Naked Gun renaissance isn’t out to be profound, pioneering, or even necessarily game-changing. It’s throwaway humor snuggled up next to slapstick bedlam and a healthy helping of nostalgia. And you know what? That’s just fine. Now and then all we require is the justification to chuckle through our popcorn.
Is it an instant comedy classic? Not on your life. But ‘ya gotta laugh and shake ‘ya head inholiday incredulity? 100%. And even apart from all the rest of that nonsense, seeing Liam Neeson deadpan his way through the absurdity all by his lonesome makes the cost of admission worthwhile.
