The Naked Gun (15)

The Naked Gun

Liam Neeson’s gleefully bonkers Naked Gun reboot is one of the stupidest films ever made. And that’s a compliment.

Neeson plays the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin. He’s an oblivious detective for the LAPD and he has a knack for barely noticing when all hell breaks loose around him.

The “plot” involves Drebin looking into the seemingly routine death of an engineer. Frank suspects foul play. But his blunt-edged lack of self-awareness gets him taken off the case. Neeson makes a meal out of Frank’s defiance of authority, so it doesn’t take long for him to go rogue and keep sniffing around after hours. The trail leads him to Richard Cane (Danny Huston), a villainous tech entrepreneur who employed the victim. Along the way, he also joins forces (and more, nudge wink) with the victim’s sister, Beth (Pamela Anderson).

The puns are often so bad they’re great and you can see most of the mayhem coming from a mile away. But even though some jokes elicit a groan rather than a genuine chuckle, the hit-to-miss ratio is impressively high. It’s a worthy successor. Frank Sr. would be proud.