Looking for a film to watch for my (quite possibly short-lived) New Year’s resolution of watching at least one film a week, I stumbled upon the 2025 The Naked Gun with Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson.
Whilst it is a continuation/sequel to the Leslie Neilsen movies, I can’t say the humour was there – I don’t think I laughed once. I did spend quite a lot of the movie thinking “Who is the actor playing Sig Gustafson” (answer: Kevin Durand – who played Vasiliy Fet in the excellent TV series “The Strain“), I didn’t recognise Pamela Anderson at all (despite being a young teen in the 80s/90s when Baywatch/Barbed Wire was available: neither really interested me, but the she was plastered everyway) and did have a bit of a smile when Weird Al’s customary Naked Gun cameo was made and a little smile when Dave Bautista made his small cameo – but that was about it.
Plot wise: Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr (the son of Leslie Neilsen’s Frank Drebin) – along with Paul Walter Hauser playing Ed Hocken Jr (the son of George Kennedy’s Captain Ed Hocken). There’s also Moses Jones playing Not Nordberg Jr who is the son of a certain deceased actor from the original movies (a small smile did grace my face when they showed the “kids” paying homage to portraits of the fathers and Nordberg broke the fourth wall with “Nah” and a shake of his head).
They have to stop multi-billionaire Richard Cane (played by Danny Huston) from taking over the world – but all they have to start from is a bank robbery where Neeson starts off by being a 4ft tall girl before taking off a mask and standing up (but still remaining in a short skirt: oh the laughs that were not heard when he stood with his leg up showing his crotch) and someone dead in an electric car.
Again, there was a small smile when the “Primordial Law of Toughness Device” was introduced (the “P.L.O.T. device”) but that was about it. It felt like someone went:
Pick from this bullet list of jokes from the original Naked Gun/Police Squad/Airplane movies – oh, and steal the plot of ‘evil rich person makes device for the people to kill each other whilst rich people hide in a bunker’ from “Kingsman: The Secret Service” – also include a rip off of the silhouette joke from Austin Powers 3 which would have been too low-brow for that movie“.
The movie was written and filmed and I feel like the feedback they got was:
- Oh – this repetitive joke was funny the first few times you did it, but to still be doing it at the end of the movie is just too boring without a payoff…
- Oh, and these jokes don’t seem to have a punch line – yes, I know the bullet list didn’t include them…
- At least you’ve included the famous “Texas Switch” between Dreben and the stuntperson – what do you mean there two cuts between the stunt and showing the actor – the actor is meant to “pop-up” seamlessly behind furniture as if they had just done the stunt but it was obvious they hadn’t…
- WTF is this three minute snowman section in the middle about?
- Oh – the “getting the confession scene” is a touch obvious and the joke went went on waay too long without any payoff/conclusion: just cut to the next scene.
- At least you’ve got the freeze-frame at the credits correct: what do you mean you actually had the image and everybody in it (apart from the main actors) not move at all – the “joke” is they are meant to be staying as still as possible whilst the main characters move
- Oh well, let’s just release it: we’ve spent more than a week writing and filming it so that’s enough.
Not the worst movie I’ve seen (but I can 100% say it is the worst movie I’ve seen all year), but can’t see me ever watching it again.