Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Seventy-something Liam Neeson rocking a Britney Spears “…Baby One More Time”–style outfit, clutching a giant lolly, and brawling with bank robbers, tell me you saw that coming in ‘The Naked Gun’, because I didn’t.
Directed by Akiva Schaffer, who shares the writing credits with Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand, this spoof-y film is led by a serious, deadpan Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr, a police officer that sounds like James Bond, but acts as if Mr. Bean was thrown into a cop movie. Seriously, Liam Neeson needs a gun salute for portraying a dumb-as-hell character with dead seriousness.
And believe it or not, this parody actually has a plot: after Frank rules a man’s death as suicide, the victim’s sister Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), a crime-fiction writer shows up at his office claiming it was murder and possibly related to a mysterious bank robbery case Frank is working on. Danny Huston plays the evil rich baddie Richard Cane, that both Frank and Beth start looking into.
The opening minutes of ‘The Naked Gun‘ are outrageously funny: Frank shapeshifts, takes down hordes of men, and even munches on a gun. Mission: Impossible, who? But the momentum soon falters, the background score turns flat, and I found myself hitting pause to do something else. Still, the sheer absurdity had me in stitches, so I gave it another shot and watched till the end. While the pacing never fully recovers, the film packs in enough laugh-out-loud moments to stay entertaining.
Some of the satirical digs at action movies are genuinely rib-tickling, especially the running gag where Frank and his junior colleague Ed (Paul Walter Hauser) are constantly handed a cup of coffee. Even mid-car driving, a random hand passes Frank a cup, as if Wednesday’s Thing decided to take up coffee delivery.
In the second-half, ‘The Naked Gun’ decides to mock Hallmark style Christmas romances when Beth and Frank decide to a little vacation before they can nail her brother’s murderer. And damn, that sequence was funnily bizarre. Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson make an unexpectedly fun pair, her comic-timing almost as earnest as his.
Thankfully, ‘The Naked Gun’ doesn’t overload itself with pop-culture references, and the few that appear aren’t exactly fresh or buzzy. At one point, Frank complains he’s still upset about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, only for Ed to remind him, “That was 20 years ago!” Sure, the joke will whizz past younger audiences, but mercifully, those references are few.
If you enjoy parody flicks like ‘Pink Panther’ and ‘Scary Movies’, you should give this film a shot too.
Rating: 6.5 on 10. You can rent ‘The Naked Gun’ on Prime Video.
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