Heightened comic lunacy and chaos defines "The Naked Gun" movies. Hell, it defines the ZAZ (Zucker, Abraham, Zucker) comedy team who knew how to write endless jokes and visual puns based off of their knowledge of bad cinema, B movies and pop culture. The series was also defined by jokes coming at you left and right, from the foreground and the background. Sure, they were largely stupid jokes but there were also smart, clever ones that you didn't see coming. Whether it was the late Leslie Nielsen as the stupid Lt. Frank Drebin finding himself in an unrecognizable area of L.A. as he is narrating, or doing flips all around his apartment thinking someone broke in, or laughing outside a theater showing "Platoon", or mistaking a security officer for Robert De Niro, you knew that there was a sense of fun to it and you had to be fast to catch every gag. If you have seen the movies, then you know.
My main problem with the new "Naked Gun" is the casting of Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin's son - it doesn't register. Neeson can play it straight but he seems adrift in all this, and not in a justifiable, comically surefire way. He is too tall and imposing a presence. Years ago when this reboot was first floating around for a green light, the name Ed Helms came up and he would've been perfect. I certainly have no issue with Pamela Anderson being cast - she's a natural for this franchise - but she's not given enough to do. Underexposed is putting it politely. Still, I give credit where it's due and the winter log cabin getaway sequence that includes a homicidal Frosty the Snowman whom Anderson decapitates is the best joke in the film.
Co-written by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand and Akiva Schaffer, this "Naked Gun" reboot has a few other chuckles along the way (the O.J. Simpson photo is hilarious, the "Mission: Impossible" set-up reference inside a studio is pretty damn funny, the endless coffee cups given to the detectives including when Drebin is driving made me smile) but it doesn't have enough fun with it. Some gags and one-liners are recycled from the original but it all lacks juice, a reason for being and there's no rollicking measure of anarchy. The villain played by Danny Huston is not enough of a baddie - he should be sneakily devious, deliciously evil (have we forgotten how good Ricardo Montalban was in the original? Practically a Bond villain type.) Even worse, the pacing and timing is off so that when a joke is supposed to fly, it sort of sits there and we know it has not landed. It should be faster-paced. It is no wonder that few have topped ZAZ's anarchic, spoofy humor in 40 years. Time to find new recruits at Police Squad.
