This movie is funny; it's slapstick, clever and is about as undemanding as a set of clean dishes.
Liam Neeson pulls off the Naked Gun stunningly. Picture Supplied
Ok. So let’s get one thing straight. Sometimes you just want to watch a movie, just because. For no other reason than being entertained.
No lessons, no moral undertones and these days, no smidgen of wokery wizardry. The Naked Gun delivers all of this and so much more, and less.
Who would have ever thought Liam Neeson had a laugh in him? The serious skop, skiet and donder, pensive and deeply reflective formula movies that the actor has become known for are flipped on their head.
This flick is deeply dippy (apologies to Right Said Fred) and original Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen will not turn in his grave when he watches it from the pearly gates either.
This movie is funny; it’s slapstick, clever and is about as undemanding as a set of clean dishes.
Neeson plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin and reprises his dad’s gloriously incompetent law enforcement tactics while causing an extraordinary amount of destruction in the name of good copping.
The movie starts with him singlehandedly taking down a gang of bank robbers while disguised as a schoolgirl. That should tell you all you need to know about this movie.
Neeson saves the day disguised as a schoolgirl
So, anyway. Drebin discovers the robbery was merely a cover for the theft of something called the P.L.O.T. Device. This thingamajig can apparently control people’s emotions and state of being, either for human advancement or regression into caveman-type behaviour.
And, of course, the latter is the objective of a tech billionaire called Richard Cane. Read some Elon Musk subtext here.
Switch back to the other side of the plot, and software engineer Simon Davenport has died in what looks like a car crash and apparent suicide.
Simon’s sister Beth, a crime novelist played by Pamela Anderson, is convinced he was murdered. Davenport, of course, worked with Cane and his company, Edentech.
So, while Cane is plotting humanity’s return to barbarism, he’s also built bunkers around the world to provide safe harbour for the select few he considers worthy of saving from his imagined apocalypse.
Meanwhile, Drebin’s bosses at Police Squad are less impressed by his crime-fighting abilities than by the lawsuits likely to follow and they reassign him. But not quite.
Of course, there’s a romantic blossoming segue between the bumbling cop and the blonde sister. Of course, there’s a bizarre love scene during an Alpine holiday wedged into the narrative. But with a snowman.
It’s hilariously, cheek-achingly funny. Sharp, witty lines of dialogue are woven between the craziness and are simply hilarious. Neeson’s dryness isn’t a wet blanket. Instead, the filmmakers use it to optimal advantage.
Watch the trailer
If you remember ’80s slapstick like Nielsen’s Naked Gun and movies like Top Secret, for example, then you will understand this movie and appreciate it for what it is. It’s like a collection of low-hanging comedic fruit that somehow cobble together a plot and narrative that runs comprehensibly through it.
Eventually, Cane’s grand plan reaches its wonderfully ridiculous conclusion at the Ponzi-scheme.com Arena on New Year’s Eve. Saving civilisation does not go smoothly, but by then the plot hardly matters anyway.
It is simply the washing line from which the filmmakers hang one ridiculous gag after another.
Pamela Anderson’s performance, by the way, is very unlike Barb Wire and quite removed from Baywatch and the beaches that made her and her assets famous.
Her timing for funny in The Naked Gun is seriously good, and she laps up Neeson’s dryness with sprinkles of her own sardonic wit. Neither of them should really work in this movie. Somehow, together, they really do.
The Naked Gun is available for rent or purchase on platforms including Apple TV.
