This reboot finds Liam Neeson inheriting the comedic gumshoes famously filled by Leslie Nielsen back in 1988. Predictably, it’s jam-packed with farcical police hijinks and chaos. Some of the jokes here can be pretty funny. But the visual and verbal gags are often sexually crude and toilet-humor focused.
It’s an old, familiar story.
Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Wait! That’s a different story.
This is the story of Frank Drebin Jr., a Police Squad copper trying to fill his cop father’s shoes. But since Drebin Sr. was also a part-time clown, they’re pretty big clodhoppers.
Frank Jr. is a hard-driving policeman running on high-octane coffee and a bad case of insomnia. But he’s not losing any sleep over it. I mean, his mind is telling him he’s still 27 with the body of a Greek god. Of course, his mind is a total idiot. Buddha was not Greek.
Anyway, Frank Jr.’s current case concerns a billionaire who’s dabbling in mass mind control. For most people, that counts as a very small case, indeed. But Frank Jr. will beat it, you’ll see. After all, he’s a guy who learns from the mistakes of others. (He can’t possibly live long enough to make them all himself.)
On top of that, Frank Jr. has learned two important lessons in life:
The first one … he can never seem to remember. And the second one … is to start writing things down. If hard work is the key to success, Frank Drebin Jr. will find a way to pick the lock.
Just remember, he who laughs last … didn’t get it.
Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. is, frankly, a bumbling idiot who thinks he’s got it all figured out. But despite his many blunders, he earnestly wants to solve his case and save the people affected by it.
Early on, Frank Jr. meets an attractive woman named Beth. He and Beth seem to care for each other and are willing to work through issues. (Frank Jr., for instance, is still suffering over the loss of his wife and his difficulty with trusting other women.)
In an odd twist, Frank Jr. and Beth go off to a cabin together and find a book of spells and incantations. They cast a spell and bring a snowman to life.
Frank Jr. talks to his father while gazing at the man’s photograph. And he asks the man to send him a sign if he’s proud of him. Later, an owl shows up and aids Frank Jr. in his mission. And when the bird flies away it tells Frank Jr., “I’m proud of you, son.”
As Frank Jr. looks at Beth, he has a running inner monologue (delivered in a gravelly detective style) that comedically (and sometimes crudely) talks about her shapely figure. Soon, all the men in the squad are voicing their overlapping inner commentaries about Beth’s body as they gaze lustfully at her. Accordingly, sexual gags and jokes abound, ranging from quips about breasts and breastfeeding to jokes about infidelity to gags about oral sex and bestiality.
For example, Frank Jr. and Beth become lovers a bit later. We see them kiss and fall into bed (clothed) and sitting in a hot tub (unclothed but covered). Then after bringing a snowman to life (mentioned above) they invite the snow guy into bed in a threesome that includes licking and eating snowy digits.
In another instance, a man with an infrared camera watches Frank Jr. and Beth through pulled curtains. And it appears that they are engaged in various sexual acts including intercourse with a dog. (In reality, though, they are innocently preparing a meal.)
Frank Jr. climbs upside down into a pair of “New Years Balls” looking for a dangerous device. The balls accidentally lower down over a crowd and Frank Jr.’s pants are ripped off. We see his bare backside and pixelated front. A commentator comments on the shape and size of his exposed (to the crowd, not the camera) genitals.
A tech billionaire named Richard Cane has invented a red-light device that’s supposed to increase a user’s sperm count. We see a couple of men—one who is apparently naked, the other without pants—standing behind the machine as it radiates their unseen lower extremities.
Frank Jr. enters a crime scene “disguised” as a little girl. Then he pulls off his mask and stands up still dressed in the girl’s tiny outfit. He lifts his leg to expose his little cartoon underpants-clad crotch.
There is lots of thumping and bumping in the police investigating mix. And while some of it can feel intense, it’s always played for laughs.
Richard Cane’s company has developed a Primordial Law of Toughness (P.L.O.T.) device that the inventor hopes to use to create chaos in the world. (For the purposes of setting up a new billionaire world order.) When activated, the P.L.O.T device (get it?) drives people into a frenzied rage. We see large crowds of people hitting, slashing and shooting one another on several occasions.
That said, Frank Jr. isn’t averse to battering and bashing baddies regularly. He fights scores of men (sometimes politely lined up in a row). He slams a guy’s face repeatedly to a tabletop. He throws a man and bowls a group of thugs over like a set of bowling pins. He batters men with a large lollipop and jams it into a someone’s mouth.
Frank Jr. batters foes with various objects in comical, but sometimes very violent ways. He rips a man’s arms off and beats him with them. He hoists someone up, and that victim’s head is lopped off by an overhead fan (bloodlessly). And he slams male combatants in the crotch regularly, practically treating one guy’s clothed genitalia like a boxer’s speed bag.
Frank Jr.’s sidekick, Ed, gets into the melee mix, too. In his case, he ends up facing a big group of drunken kids whom he punches, kicks and tosses around. One guy has his head bloodlessly kicked off. Men crash and fall off motorbikes. Someone soars upward and knocks himself out when smashing headfirst into a street lamp.
Frank Jr. investigates a crashed vehicle in which a man was killed.
The dialogue holds three s-words, a half dozen uses of the word “h—” and one or two uses of “a–.” We also hear a misuse of God’s name.
While on a case, Frank Jr.’s fellow policeman, Ed, mans a concession booth and gives a man a free beer to go away. In a heartbeat a line of people forms in front of him, including children, lining up for free beers. Later, Ed sits in a circle with a bunch of beer-drinking kids. We see adults drinking martinis and champagne at a club. Frank Jr. and Beth share glasses of hard liquor.
We hear a variety of quick jokes about alcohol use. For instance, Beth uses a bottle of alcohol to clean an open wound on Frank Jr.’s arm, and gradually her treatment turns the wound into a Bloody Mary.
Richard Cane smokes a cigar. An empty prescription bottle is found in a wrecked car.
Lots of rapid-fire potty-humor gags are scattered throughout the dialogue mix. Frank Jr. eats a chili dog, for instance, and a group of people watch via his body cam footage as he wrestles with various explosive gastro problems. Some of that humor also blends the scatological with the sexual.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines “farce” in this way: “A comic dramatic piece that uses highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, extravagant exaggeration, and violent horseplay.” Throw in a truckload of puns, a passel of sexual double entendres, a bit of pixilated nudity and a series of scatological rib-ticklers, and you’ve got the perfect description for The Naked Gun.
I’m including Naked Gun pics of the present and past in that collective definition as well. That’s because this latest stab at a farcical police comedy perfectly mirrors the original entries in this series: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), and The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994).
Now, upon hearing me say that, some people will likely start rubbing their hands together with a goody-goody glee in their eyes, while everyone else will be thinking, Oh, please … noooo!!
The reason for that stark delineation is the fact that, as we all know, humor isn’t a universal commodity. Exuberant farce tends to appeal to the guffawing sensibilities of, well, 12-year-old boys. And based on the abundant chortling in my recent, fully packed screening of this pic, there must be a lot of them out there.
Of course, much of The Naked Gun’s content is also the sort of stuff that most parents won’t want any of their kids repeating. In fact, I can easily imagine parents labeling the whole shebang as crude and obnoxious and demanding that surely I would agree!!
To them I will say, I do agree. And stop calling me Shirley!
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
