One Thing I Mostly Like About The Naked Gun

It’s tough to explain the exact difference between a Naked Gun gag and a Police Squad! gag, but there’s an example of each in the same scene of the original The Naked Gun:

Leslie Nielsen is looking up Priscilla Presley’s dress, and he says “nice beaver!” after which she says “thanks, I just had it stuffed,” and hands him the taxidermied beaver she’d been holding.1 That’s a Naked Gun gag.

When he compliments her ankle bracelet, she says, “Oh, did that slip down there again?” and puts it back on her wrist. That’s a Police Squad! gag.

I was such a huge fan of Police Squad!, I think that even at only six episodes, it’s the funniest TV series ever made, and there’s been nothing that’s ever matched its brilliance. So the original movies were funny, but kind of a disappointment. I don’t know whether it’s the longer run time, the fact that being free of network censors meant they didn’t have to be as subtle, or if they just ran out of their best material in the TV series. But most of the humor in the movies just felt kind of obvious in comparison to the series.

Based on the trailers for the new version of The Naked Gun, I expected it to be more of the same: funny, but hella corny and kind of obvious. Movie tough guy Liam Neeson dressed as a little girl, showing his little girl underwear? Can you even believe it?!

So I was pleasantly surprised that the full version of that scene is stuffed with some genuinely funny, goofy gags. It was really starting to feel like they’d left the Naked Gun stuff in the trailers but saved the Police Squad! level gags for the full movie.

And my favorite was when a bad guy opens a safe deposit box and pulls out an ominous piece of electronics, which is labeled “P.L.O.T. DEVICE.” That’s the stuff.

The first 25 minutes or so is packed full of rapid-fire gags, hitting the right balance and somehow managing to be both goofy and understated. I was starting to wonder if they’d finally managed to make a real Police Squad! movie.

But gradually the jokes get cornier and more obvious instead of drily, understated wittiness. And then there are segments that are weird for their own sake, in a way that I don’t remember in any of the movies, so it ends up feeling like an amalgamation of Police Squad!, The Naked Gun, and a Lonely Island digital short, unsurprisingly.

Most of it worked, and I was surprised by how much it had me laughing out loud. The only part that had me sitting there stone-faced was the whole night-vision binoculars bit.

My main criticism isn’t that the jokes weren’t funny, just that there weren’t nearly enough of them. There are entire scenes where the movie actually seemed to be trying to move the plot forward, which seems to be missing the point entirely2, and I started counting all the opportunities for jokes in the background that they missed.

For instance: Frank finds a box of matches with a logo on it, and the logo ties a murder victim to a nightclub owned by the villain. But there’s no joke there, which is a big disappointment to anybody who remembers the logo for the Club Flamingo from Police Squad!, and then the animated sign that’s over the Club Flamingo.

(There’s one gag like this in the new Naked Gun: a scene takes place in an Ultimate Fighting Championship ring, and on the mat, quietly hidden among the logos for energy drinks and muscle slime, there’s the logo for sponsor NPR).

But overall, it’s pretty funny, and I got a strong sense that this was made by people who loved Police Squad! as much as they loved The Naked Gun. I appreciated all the moments that felt like homages to the original series, and I only wish that there were a lot more of them.

1
Both the beaver and Presley have cameos in the new movie.

2
Especially when they’d already acknowledged that this movie isn’t about the P.L.O.T.

1 Both the beaver and Presley have cameos in the new movie.

2 Especially when they’d already acknowledged that this movie isn’t about the P.L.O.T.