The Naked Gun (and The Naked Gun 33 1/3) is one of my favorite comedies of all time, so rebooting it without the original ZAZ team could’ve been a disaster. Having director Akiva Schaffer from The Lonely Island and producer Seth (Family Guy) MacFarlane combining forces behind the scenes was an inspired choice. The same goes for putting Liam Neeson in the lead. The reason the casting works as well as it does is that instead of trying to recreate the feel of the original movies (and the Police Squad! TV show), it’s more or less a spoof of your typical Liam Neeson vehicle. Neeson doesn’t try to mimic Leslie Nielsen either. He just acts like he’s in a MAD magazine version of a Liam Neeson movie. This approach yields plenty of laughs while keeping the same brand of humor that made the original Naked Gun films classics. (“Cigar?” “Sure looks like it!”)
The plot (not that it needs one) has detective Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson) investigating a murder. He gets unwanted help from the dead man’s sister (Pamela Anderson, who seems to be enjoying her recent career resurgence thanks to her performance in The Last Showgirl), who wants justice. The trail eventually leads to an evil tech billionaire (Danny Huston) who has invented a device that will turn average citizens into crazed killers.
The film contains plenty of hearty laughs sprinkled throughout the first hour or so. Sadly, it starts to run out of gas in the last twenty minutes. It’s here where the filmmakers seem to take the plot a little too seriously and try to wrap things up a little too neatly. That said, there is one scene in this movie that is without a doubt one of the funniest sequences of the 21st century. I wouldn’t spoil it for you for a million bucks. All I’ll say is that it’s quite possibly the most hysterical romantic interlude montages of all time. If that doesn’t make you want to see it, I don’t know what to tell you.
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