Yesterday my nephew and I went to a matinee of The Naked Gun because we both needed a laugh. It definitely delivered because we both had a lot of fun with it. Lt. Frank Drebin, Jr. (Liam Neeson) engages in some questionable police tactics while investigating a bank robbery so he is pulled from the case by Chief Davis (CCH Pounder), head of the Police Squad, and sent to investigate a fatal car crash involving Simon Davenport (Jason MacDonald). He accidentally discovers that both cases lead to Richard Cane (Danny Huston), a tech billionaire with a nefarious plan for world dominion using a P.L.O.T. device. Drebin enlists the help of Davenport's sister Beth (Pamela Anderson) and his sidekick Capt. Ed Hocken, Jr (Paul Walter Hauser) to conduct a sting operation at a WWE match on New Year's Eve. Hilarity ensues. Neeson is absolutely brilliant because he delivers all of the comedy with the seriousness and gravitas of his recent action roles and that makes everything even funnier. Huston looks like he is having a blast as a sneering villain (all that is missing is a mustache for him to twirl) but it is Anderson who is the biggest surprise because she steals every scene she is in as a vampy femme fatale, especially a hilarious montage of a romantic weekend getaway and a jazz performance at a night cub. There are some fun callbacks to the original series and, even though the pratfalls, word-play, and sight gags didn't always make me or the rest of the audience laugh out loud, I did spend most of the movie chuckling to myself (pay very close attention to the names of everything). There is definitely enough zany humor to make this a fun time at the movies and I recommend it to fans of slapstick comedies.
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