The Naked Gun

“The Naked Gun” reboot comes from a dream team ideally situated to reboot the sublimely silly 1980s franchise. Liam Neeson fits perfectly into the Leslie Nielson tradition as a Hollywood-handsome dramatic actor fearless about looking ridiculous. And The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer is just right as a co-writer and director who goes pedal to the metal, respecting the original when it comes to the non-step goofiness but wasting no time on respecting what doesn’t deserve it (see the OJ joke in the trailer).

As anyone familiar with this franchise knows, the plot barely matters and the characters exist just to deliver all of the sight and verbal gags. It’s just one absurd joke after another, and I don’t want to spoil them, so this will be a bit vague.

Neeson plays the son of Nielson’s character, Frank Drebin, Jr., wanting to live up to the record and values of his dad. The film opens with a bank robbery by a gang with a lot of guns. I won’t spoil Drebin’s trick for getting into the bank, but I will say it sets the tone, along with the real purpose of the robbery, not the cash but a gadget in one of the safe deposit boxes, clearly labeled “PLOT DEVICE.”

The villain in this story is Richard Cane, an entirely imaginary, I’m sure, tech billionaire whose company happens to make self-driving electric vehicles. Danny Huston is also perfectly cast as the superficially charming sociopath who plans to reboot society by unleashing humanity’s most savage instincts until only the alphas survive. Basically, he wants to unplug civilization and plug it in again. His company is meaningfully named Eden Tech, with “technologies to rival the gods.”

Pamela Anderson is more than game as Beth Davenport, sister of a murdered man connected to Cane and who may also be connected to the bank robbery. At one point, she gets up to scat sing a jazz number. That is really her singing. She is surprisingly tuneful and also hilarious. When Drebin tells her to take a chair, she doubles down on the pun with the insouciantly businesslike way she drags it out of the room. CCH Pounder is excellent as always as the tough police chief with a sleepy husband.

Nothing is sacred here and everything is up for humor, including the franchise itself. The movie features witchcraft to animate a sexy snowman, a double entendre conversation about turkeys. There are references to “Sex and the City,” Bill Cosby, Tucker Carlson’s “End of Men” idea about radiating genitals, pop-up Halloween stores, and TIVOs. And, as always in these films, the jokes fly by so fast and so shamelessly that by the time you realize you didn’t like one, three funnier ones have appeared.

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop silly jokes, some of it suggestive or vulgar, with bathroom humor, a threesome (with a snowman!), silhouettes that appear to be sex acts, and a bare bottom. The storyline includes a murder, a violent bank robbery, a reference to suicide, and a dastardly criminal plot. There is some strong language, including the r-word.

Family discussion: This movie has many different kinds of humor. How many can you identify? How does this movie connect to the originals and what does it do differently? In what ways do both Drebin and Cane think the world was better before?

If you like this, try: the earlier “Naked Gun” television series and films