THE NAKED GUN Review: Revival Hits More Than It Misses (Barely)

While it's no longer unusual for decades to pass between entries in a studio-owned series (see, e.g., Top Gun: Maverick, Blade Runner 2049), they still remain a relatively rare occurrence.

 

Disinterest, indifference, and/or apathy on the part of rights-holders and potential audiences alike usually explain the lengthy gap between entries. Never underestimate, of course, the power of nostalgia and its ability to convince rights-holders to bring a long disused, ignored, or forgotten property back to movie theaters, both to restart a franchise with “new” entries and renew interest in decades-old properties like the long defunct Naked Gun series.

 

The irreplaceable star of the 1980s TV show and subsequent film series, Leslie Nielsen, left our mortal plane for the immortal one more than a decade ago, making a legacy sequel impossible, in turn necessitating a lead swap, from Nielsen's detective character to his character’s long-lost, newly found son, Frank Drebin, Jr. (Liam Neeson). A walking, talking, coffee-drinking anachronism, Junior has followed in his father’s footsteps in law enforcement, specifically a Lt. grade detective in the Police Squad, a division of the Los Angeles PD, alongside his longtime partner, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser).

 

Parodying sclerotic genre tropes, the very white Drebin and Hocken report to a perpetually exasperated Black superior, Chief Davis (CCH Pounder). Davis calls out Drebin for his prehistoric policing methods. In turn, Drebin deliberately assumes she's not serious. Drebin assumes it's all performative on Davis's part, meant to create plausible deniability when, as expected, Drebin and Hocken go off-book, breaking inconvenient laws and regulations as needed to keep LA safe from blue- and white-collar criminals (more the former than the latter).

 

With a scattershot screenplay credited to Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, The Watch, Hot Rod), The Naked Gun's central plot turns on an Elon Musk-like serial inventor and megalomaniacal billionaire, Richard Kane (a slightly bored Danny Huston), and a janky, ill-thought-out plan for world domination derived from watching Matthew Vaughan’s Kingsman: The Secret Service on repeat for a month straight: Cane claims he just wants to make the world a better pace. His definition of a "better place," though, only includes wealthy and/or powerful elites.

 

But audiences don’t pay premium ticket prices for the plot, at least not where The Naked Gun series happens to be concerned. Not then and certainly not now. They’re here (or there) for the kind of rapid-fire humor, clever, dumb, or both, to get them through the sub-85-minute running time. At least on that count, The Naked Gun squeaks out a marginal win joke-wise, though the ratio of hits to misses tips close to the latter than the former by the time the end credits roll.

 

A noticeable step down quality-wise for Schaffer, a founding member of The Lonely Island alongside Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone, The Naked Gun represents a valiant effort to reclaim a long-dormant franchise for a new generation, but it’s just that, a valiant effort. Competently, if anonymously directed, The Naked Gun unfortunately lacks the satirical edge, daring, or shock of The Lonely Island’s groundbreaking digital shorts for SNL (Saturday Night Live) or their underappreciated feature-film collaborations.

 

Only a mid-film tangent involving a weekend getaway, a cabin in the woods, and an old, dusty book suspiciously resembling the Necronomicon comes even remotely close to the rapid-fire, non-sequitur humor of the original series or the comedic brilliance of the The Lonely Island's digital shorts. Two or three more similar segments could have elevated The Naked Gun into something truly worth watching instead of the one-and-done, risk-averse, middling gags and jokes audiences receive here. 

 

Still, a game Neeson and strongly supported by an underused Hauser and Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl) as Beth Davenport, the meddlesome sister of a murder victim connected to Kane's diabolical plan, brings a self-consciously serious, droll approach to otherwise ludicrous, trope-tweaking material. Collectively, they elevate the occasional stale, uninspired joke into laugh-out-loud territory. In addition to Neeson and Anderson’s onscreen chemistry, they're also willing to do practically anything for a joke, up to and including serving as the punchline, just barely makes The Naked Gun worth a bargain matinee at your local multiplex.