Liam Neeson deeply unfunny in Naked Gun reboot that fails to honour Leslie Nielsen’s iconic Frank Drebin

Remaking a comedy classic was never going to be easy, but The Naked Gun reboot made the task even harder when it cast the deeply unfunny Liam Neeson as the son of Frank Drebin, a role made iconic by the late Leslie Nielsen. Like Neeson, Nielsen made his name as a leading man in dramatic movies such as The Poseidon Adventure, but made the canny decision to make a mid-career pivot into comedy in the 1980 classic Airplane!, from David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. The slapstick stuck and Nielsen’s deadpan delivery in the midst of absurdity made him ideally suited to lampoon police procedurals in the ill-fated Police Squad! series (also created by Zucker and Abrahams), which became three Naked Gun movies between 1988 and 1994. If Neeson ever had comedy chops, one can only assume it was beaten out of him during the past two decades of mindless action movies that all seem to be about someone kidnapping his loved ones. The Naked Gun finds the Northern Irish actor awkwardly attempting to meet the physical demands of slapstick as Drebin Jr, while bumbling his way through rapid-fire one-liners with zero timing whatsoever. Nielsen could generate belly laughs with a single look. Neeson is just hard to look at, as his face regularly contorts into a grimace reminiscent of rigor mortis in a corpse. And the argument that the 73-year-old’s casting works as a parody of his status as an action hero completely ignores the fact his career unintentionally veered into parody years ago. As with all Naked Gun movies, there’s no point unpacking the plot, because whatever half-baked narrative exists is merely a flimsy architecture to hang gags from, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The gags in this instance, unfortunately, have a hit rate of about one in five (actually not terrible considering the sheer volume), which is no huge surprise given the most impressive previous work on the scriptwriters’ resumes is Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. It’s hard not to think the writers, as well as director Akiva Schaffer (of Lonely Island fame) were desperate to impress producer Seth MacFarlane, best known as the creator of the famously crass Family Guy animated series. The OG Naked Gun could be crass, too, but pulled it off with silly charm, where the reboot resorts to the kind of humour that relies on shock value, as per Family Guy. A sex scene featuring a snowman, and sexual innuendo with a dog, might have seemed “edgy” in the writers’ room, but read as try-hard on the screen. Acting opposite Neeson, a man who frequently runs the risk of being mistaken for a literal lump of wood, former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson does her best as Drebin’s love interest, Beth. The death of her character’s brother is the case Drebin investigates in the film, and her femme fatale performance is a solid spoof of noir cinema and the best thing here. Let’s be real, though, Anderson is no Meryl Streep. While it’s fantastic to see a studio bring a near-dead comedy genre back to the big screen, The Naked Gun reboot’s most compelling reason for existing is as an excuse to go back and watch the original movies. The Naked Gun is in cinemas on August 21.