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I watched The Naked Gun this morning. I guess I wanted to know if it was funny. 

Certainly I remember laughing a lot when I first saw it but it’s been some years so I was curious to see if it was still as good. Having done so I think I would now describe it as amiably amusing. I was entertained but it has to be said that at no point did I ever crack a smile, let alone make any involuntary audible indications of my true appreciation of the humour. As said, this is a change to my initial viewing, or indeed viewings as it was a movie I returned to off and on it being popular amongst my friends. It’s possible that this being the case I just knew that the jokes were coming but even then some of them land differently these days. It’s not that they are particularly inappropriate for a modern audience, although the opening where Leslie Nielsen’s Detective Drebin beats up a number of famous Middle Eastern Leaders is not something you’d see played out now (unless it is being made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone perhaps) and the beaver gag isn’t as funny as it used to be. Generally though it all just feels a little obvious. 

So then I watched The Naked Gun this afternoon. I guess I wanted to know if it was funny. 

Actually that’s not right, I’d heard it was funny so what I guess what I wanted to know was how funny. The thing with all of these types of silly spoof movies is that the joke rate is high enough that even if they don’t all land some of them are bound to tickle you at some point. The Airplane films, which like the original Naked Gun trilogy come from writing and directing team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, are the classics of this genre and their Hot Shots movies are pretty good too. Further down the scale you have The Scary Movie movies and right at the bottom, actually registering no laughs at all at the follow ups like Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie and Epic Movie.

Sadly in my opinion, this one isn’t actually that funny. Unlike with my rewatch of the first film I did laugh but only two or three times and not real laughs, just those brief kind of hiccupy ones you do when something daft catches you off guard. Also, I’m afraid I wouldn’t even describe this one as amiably amusing. I realise that much of what carried me through this morning was my nostalgic affection for the 1988 film and I don’t have that for this one. I don’t think new lead Liam Neeson is quite the master of deadpan that Leslie Nielsen was either. Nielsen had a quite brilliant expression he did after something funny would happen; face fixed, eyes slightly off to the right, eye brows straight, that was genius and he would always hold it for one perfect beat and move on. Neeson is getting there, with his repeated returns to comedy, but it’s not the same. Pamela Anderson is probably a little better at this but I’m not sure this film was a great choice for her. It certainly continues her renaissance but actually, if you think about it, a few months ago this is precisely the type of film you’d have expected her to turn up in now and if we hadn’t seen her in The Last Showgirl beforehand we probably wouldn’t think this part of a new career plan at all, just a move to get back in the limelight. What they should have done is make her the protagonist, have it be Frank Drebin’s daughter not his son. Prior to Airplane, Nielsen was a B-Movie star and as David Zucker, in the inevitable what do you think of this reboot interview, has recently pointed out that was part of the joke. Anderson was the same and feels like she suits this more than the guy who one of this most respected actors of his generation, Oscar winning Liam Neeson. If Anderson had been the lead and owned this then we’d have probably seen it more as a star taking control of her assent rather than a supporting role that someone like Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Lopez turned down.

Part of the problem here is that comedy has moved on. There has been a discussion in the media about how funny films do not get released in cinemas anymore and one of the trailers for the movie was actually centred around this:

It is true that these types of films do tend to go straight to streaming these days but that doesn’t mean there are no laughs to be shared with large theatre audiences. We’ve had A Real Pain, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and The Ballad of Wallis Island this year, that all had drama and emotional elements but generated real chuckles too; proper loud ones not those you swallow almost as soon as start them. Let’s not forget as well that Deadpool & Wolverine was the second biggest film of last year and that is effectively a parody film. It isn’t that comedy movies are not getting big releases anymore, it’s just that different kinds of comedy movies, dare I say more sophisticated ones, are getting them. 

In the end I think that while The Naked Gun took this a risk with this then, it still played it a bit safe. It is just more of the same from thirty years ago (only the snowman sequence takes any real swings). Maybe they should have taken a leaf out of the South Park book and gone for some kind of bold social or political commentary. There is one reference to the police thinking they are above the law and the bad guy is a thinly veiled copy of Elon Musk but none of it goes very far. 

This evening then, I shall be watching something else and my advice you do the same.