The Naked Gun review: Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are locked, loaded (and dating) but reboot is a misfire

Irish Independent

5 days ago

Before being wiped out in a mid-Noughties cultural asteroid strike, the Manly Man was the saviour of broads and the growler of old-school, no-nonsense truths, all done while taking out the bad guys. You knew where you stood with him.
Liam Neeson, should you need reminding, has done well for himself since turning his back on critical worthiness and restyling himself as the last of the machos. Who better to bring Police Squad! hero Lieutenant Frank Drebin to the attention of a new generation than Ballymena's Taken titan.
In the hands of the late, great Leslie Nielsen, the original three Naked Gun instalments were the pinnacle of pulling down Mr ­Macho's trousers and slapping his face with a custard pie. ­Nielsen looked like your uncle, spoke like a Hollywood-noir pastiche, and buffooned with a straight face like the master clown that he was.
We know Neeson can do comedy. Or at least, we know he's well able to self-parody the macho archetype that has become his bread and butter. 'I've played Rob Roy MacGregor, Michael Collins, Oskar Schindler, Zeus for God's sake,' he deadpans brilliantly during a improv sketch in Ricky Gervais's Life's Too Short. 'No one's going to believe me as a greengrocer.'
Thus we find Neeson unsurprisingly game in this reboot from Akiva Schaffer, even if, at 73, he might be a few years past his ­rubbery best (Nielsen had three feature outings as Drebin wrapped by age 68).
The issue for Schaffer's film (produced somewhat predictably by Seth MacFarlane) is more that big-screen comedy has changed in the three or four decades since those originals forged by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers. We rarely see such cartoonish, rapid-fire, shamelessly bawdy fare in cinemas these days. Gone the same way as the Manly Man, you might say.
An unenviable task, then, and from early doors this superfluously revamped Naked Gun has a clunky feel that it struggles to shake.
After an abominably ­rubbish intro scene, we're quickly ­debriefed that Neeson is Frank Drebin Jr.
No sooner is he doffing his cap to a portrait of Nielsen's character at police HQ than an OJ Simpson gag prepares us for what will be a low-brow hour-and-a-half ahead. He and partner Ed (Paul Walter Hauser) are assigned to a murder case that is somehow linked to a powerful tech mogul (Danny Huston on wolfish autopilot).
To the sound of saxophones, the stakes rise sharply with the arrival of the victim's glamorous sister, Beth (played by one of this film's few mercies – Pamela Anderson).
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The subject of much are-they-aren't-they speculation – and they just confirmed they are dating – after recent, decidedly cuddly, red carpet appearances, Neeson and Anderson duet impeccably. ­Besides looking great together, they carry themselves like old pros who have been around the block and relish the chance to play exaggerated versions of themselves for laughs.
Before long, there's threesome gags involving labradors and ­demonic snowmen as the lovebirds bond in the customary fashion of Nielsen and Priscilla Presley (who makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo).
Some of this is hilarious, but not enough. A brand this roundly arch, this relentlessly silly, should be hitting you in jabs, not tickling you once every 10 minutes.
Comedically pliable they may be, but Neeson and Anderson aren't given enough good writing to keep the gags landing, even the off-colour, groan-inducing kind. Too many jokes skim the bullseye, or dribble forlornly to the ground to the sound of silence.
For all the giving out done by people like me about Hollywood's rampant reboot culture, this is, if anything, a case of not adhering enough to the originals, not aping them sufficiently or aligning to their parodic tone and textures.
The Nielsen era was designed to look like spoof throwbacks, but this update prefers to lean into slickly shot set designs and shoddy tech-era japes, straining to get with the times. It's no ­coincidence it's at its funniest when it embraces those forebears, even pinching a couple of gags outright.
Less a near-miss than an outright misfire. The Manly Man surely deserved better.