‘The Naked Gun’ movie review: Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson reboot the slapstick classic with laughs aplenty

There were moments when I laughed out loud in the empty theatre (sigh), including Miranda Rights (Carrie is the one who writes) and “take a chair” which brings back fond memories of ‘Johnny, how about a coffee?’ And of course there are many cups of coffee powering The Naked Gun.

The film opens with a bank robbery and a little girl skipping nonchalantly into the bank only to reveal herself to be…  Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson). While the robbery is going on, a mysterious man, Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand), gets a gadget, a P.L.O.T. Device, out of a locker and hands to another mysterious man, Richard Cane (Danny Huston), who drives away with it in a mysterious car.

The bank robbers are quickly dispatched Frank is on the road with rapidly replaced cups of coffee and a gravelly voiceover. Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) calls Frank and his partner, Capt. Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) in for a dressing down—the elite Police Squad is getting shut down, the bank robbers are suing and Frank has been reassigned to traffic.

Off Frank goes to check out a car crash, carefully putting on a glove on one hand while handling what might be an important clue with the other. He rules the accident, which killed a tech engineer, a suicide. Frank returns to his office to meet a curvaceous blond woman, Beth, (Pamela Anderson), who tells him her brother, Davenport, would not have committed suicide and there is more to his death than meets the eye.

A still from ‘The Naked Gun’
| Photo Credit:
Paramount Pictures

Davenport was working for the green energy tech billionaire, Cane, and after carefully, or not-so-carefully interviewing the suspects (including one, Busta Rhymes, who was arrested for “man’s laughter or manslaughter”) Frank realises the two cases are connected.

There is an enchanted, jealous snowman, a long discussion on roasting turkey, another on cleaning out a dirty oven, many more cups of takeaway coffee and an owl, before all comes right in the end.

Neeson proves he has the special skills to step into Leslie Nielsen’s shoes. The legacy sequel to ZAZ (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker) trilogy of Naked Gun movies, the film is funny without being so meta as to cannabalise itself.

There is even “Weird Al” Yankovic as himself who comes in the post credit scene to perform for the absent evil billionaires, a sequence where Dave Bautista steps in for Frank who is on a bathroom break and the credits rolling over the revolving lights of a runaway police car.

At 87 minutes, The Naked Gun does not overstay its welcome while conclusively proving it is worth coming to the theatres with friends for a guaranteed jolly good time.

The Naked Gun is currently running in theatres