Why do people still love the classic comedies from the 1980s? Why do Hollywood execs insist on remaking classic films? Okay, it made a bundle of money once; sure, it’ll make a bunch of money again.
With so much executive input into a movie nowadays, remember that a horse designed by a committee is a camel.
Someone once said of a feature-length comedy that an audience can laugh only so much before it hurts.
Sustaining laughter for more than an hour is a big ask.
Paid to see the movie on the big screen, watched it and kinda regretted it… and wouldn’t watch it again.
This reboot of The Naked Gun has sparse moments of giggle and tee-hee.
The audience in the cinema I sat with was quiet much of the time.
Maybe they smiled, but that doesn’t elicit sound.
Dumb-nutted Frank Drebin, Jr (Liam Neeson) is the only man with skills to lead Police Squad and save the world.
Neeson is miscast.
Around the time of the original Naked Gun pictures, he basked in the acclaim of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as Oskar Schindler.
Sure, Neeson can do deadpan, send up his image as an action hero, forget about dignity and vanity, but he lacks that crucial sense of comedic timing.
Too many gags look like they’d been lifted from Taken or one of his other action films.
I’d have preferred to see someone like Bob Oedenkirk in the lead, not as well known as Neeson, but with chops for comedy as Elaine Benes’ would-be doctor boyfriend Ben in Seinfeld, writing for Saturday Night Live, and the droll Saul in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
Police Squad was a short-lived TV series, only six episodes, but it had manic energy Cancelled before its time, it starred Canadian-American dramatic actor Leslie Nielsen, a supporting actor in dramas, westerns and romance films.
But he had the knack for comedy, though not given that opportunity until the 1980 Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker comedy Airplane, released in Australia as Flying High.
According to film critic Roger Ebert, he became “the Olivier of spoofs”.
Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) is the most interesting character in The Naked Gun.
Turning silliness into gold, she only wants answers to her brother’s death.
She’s just the femme fatale to do it too. “I write true crime novels based on fictional stories that I make up.” Everything she does in a not-always-so-funny film works.
Her scat number in a jazz club is a laugh-out-loud scene stealer.
Neeson’s at his best when performing with Anderson.
Billionaire Richard Crane (Danny Huston) is a villain with a device that turns humans into predators that destroy one another through violence.
He wants to rebuild society to his liking where only his sycophants survive. Davenport’s brother died under mysterious circumstances connected to Crane’s enterprise.
In the original TV series and The Naked Gun movie franchise, background action always included silly visual gags making them eminently watchable to discover something earlier missed.
The remake forgets about and lacks well-timed background anomalies.
The remake does best in humorous dialogue, the quick wit and twisting of the language.
Drebin, Jr tells an alleged crim, “I see you got 20 years for man’s laughter.”
Think about it. Work it out. The line made me laugh most.
Some people left as end credits showed. They missed out on more visual gags and goofy inclusions in the credits.
Stick around for additional smiles and a final shot with Weird Al Yankovic who’d been in the 1988 Naked Gun film.
That Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson found personal romance making The Naked Gun may, perhaps, be the best outcome of the movie.
