The Naked Gun
Review: This movie is for all the folks that complain about no good, classic comedies. It had some crude humor, lots of puns, & toed the line of offensiveness without going too far, touching on ‘taboo’ topics that some comedians refrain from joking about in today’s climate (I think the best example of this was there nod to original cast member, OJ Simpson). While this doesn’t entire my top echelon of favorite flicks of the year, it is probably the funniest. A lot of the humor is dumb, but you should fully expect that when entering the movie. It is a revival of the parody/spoof genre, poking fun at noir/cop tropes as well as specific franchises (like ‘Mission: Impossible’). There were several one liners & bits worth mentioning, but I hesitate to list them as reading them here surly won’t grant the same level of humor. Liam Neeson was perfect here & I want to give him a ton of credit for doing something we haven’t really seen from him before, just being a goof. Pamela Anderson matched his energy perfectly & I also want to give due credit to Paul Walter Hauser, always a great supporting player in any film. This is definitely a movie worth checking out, and if you have the opportunity to watch it in a theater with others, I’d do so. The enthusiasm & enjoyment of the people around me made my personal experience that much better.
High: With a ton of physical, visual, or audial jokes, this movie truly does have a brand of humor for everyone. There was even a little ‘Sex and the City’ joke I was excited to tell my wife about when I got home. Clever plays on classic genre tropes & also just some straight up insanity akin to writer/director Akiva Schaffer’s Lonely Island days on SNL. But they fully leaned in and committed to every bit and it paid off. Sometimes I give credit to a movie for leaning in, even if the result was a flop. This movie leaned in and was significantly better for it. It was crucially self aware, in every sense it could be, whether you look at the script, or even the actors themselves.
Low: Really my only low is that Daddy Frank, Leslie Nielsen, wasn’t alive to make a cameo or at least see the revival of his beloved franchise occur.
Rating: 7.5/10
