The Naked Gun

Bluesky

Weird Al Yankovic has spoken about the difficulty of writing parody songs after the end of monoculture. Speaking to Billboard recently he was positive about fans being able to listen to exactly what they're into, but the difficulty he faces because his work relies on audiences being familiar with the same material. It's an element that's affected parody films too. That it's been 12 years since Scary Movie 5 isn't down to a lack of things to steal.

The Naked Gun is a comedy that relies more on genre parody rather than spoofing an individual film. It has its roots in Zucker Abrahams Zucker's works, but while Airplane had lifted elements wholesale from Zero Hour! and the first The Naked Gun (From The Files Of Police Squad) owed a debt to cold-war thriller Telefon, here we've something perhaps more of genre than a specific parody. If we dare to be stupid, and The Naked Gun does, we can have a pretty good time.

Liam Neeson is five years older than Leslie Nielsen was when he played Frank Drebin (Senior) for the last time. The arithmetic on this next generation isn't going to trouble anyone though. The more important calculation is how often you'll laugh. To that end the film is helped by the intersection of quantity and quality. There's enough forms of humour, from the scatalogical to the subtle, from bestiality to police brutality, that if you don't catch one joke another will be along in a minute. If not less than that, as across its 85 minutes there's an almost uncountable number of jokes. I particularly enjoyed some of the background japes. A sporting event is set in the 'ponzi-scheme.com arena' and product placement for real beverages is treated with equal respect as that for fictional goods like Gorilla Nut and Muscle Slime.

Akiva Schaffer, one of Saturday Night Live-associated comedy trio The Lonely Island directs. He co-writes with the team of Doug Mand and Doug Gregor who have plenty of US sitcom experience, as well as penning the Robert Downey Jr Doctor Dolittle and the most recent Chip'n Dale feature. Some of the publicity material foregrounds the involvement of Seth Macfarlane as producer, and his work with Neeson is why there's perhaps not as much surprise in seeing him ostensibly playing against type.

This won't be for everyone, humour is easily unbalanced and what will bring choler to some cheeks will bring bile to other throats. Having argued that it is closer to a genre parody it'd be remiss to ignore how closely parts of its structure are to Kingsman: The Secret Service which was itself a genre-aware film with parodic elements. It did have fewer coffee cups though, which abound with a profusion that makes their recurring presence in Fight Club seem like an easily overlooked background detail.

The elements of repetition appear to include everything in the trailers. I must admit that my already somewhat subverted expectations were further wrong-footed by the presence of a line that I was convinced was exclusively for previews. It's probably indicative, and a sign that The Naked Gun isn't really interested in subtlety and perhaps also not in surprise. It's far from the whole film, and it definitely gets bawdier and broader across the bigger canvas. Sometimes, no matter how refined one's taste, what appeals is something from a place where the menu has pictures. Repetition as well because it is far more in keeping with the original tone of the franchise, from the camera looking over the flashing lights of a patrol car through inappropriate scenes to jokes in the text of the credits that are worth looking out for.

In the supporting cast Pamela Anderson is a real standout, embracing the chaos as enthusiastically as anyone could hope. Elsewhere CCH Pounder and Danny Huston manage the difficult feat of playing characters who are in the wrong genre, a mismatch that's as compelling as Michael Caine or Tim Curry among The Muppets. Some of the amusement relies on knowing things about American Football or the ingredients of a Bloody Mary but like the buses in Speed if they go over your head you can either get the next one or catch it when it loops back around.

That sense of 'another one' is, without meaning to damn with faint praise, where The Naked Gun really works. Fondness for old comedies is often based on forgetfulness. If you only remember the high points then even the bumpiest of rides can seem polished. A car chase of sorts had me laughing out loud because of the way it embraced both cliché and the comedy carried with it. Watching F1 I found myself leaning into the corners and watching this I found myself falling for absurdity.

A scattershot approach means that those of us who remember Microsoft Office Assistants that retired in 2007 and who could diagram a Jet Li pistol-disarm will be equally amused. There are doubtless other things for which I am the wrong demographic that might get another cinema-goer guffawing. There's the suggestion that you shouldn't worry about the bullet with your name on it but the hundred others marked 'to whom it may concern'. Comedy is inherently subjective, but in both its casting and in casting such a wide net, The Naked Gun is likely to hit its target.

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