By Nick Nitkowski

I don’t care what anyone says. Making a parody is truly an artform. Some can do it beautifully like Weird Al Yankovic, and some do it horribly like Friedberg and Seltzer. Some may think it’s easy, but if the end result doesn’t make me laugh, then I consider it a failure. Believe it or not, I only recently watched the original “Naked Gun” film for the first time just out of curiosity since the trailer for the new “Naked Gun” movie dropped and I thought it was hilarious. Naturally, this made me even more hopeful for the new “Naked Gun” movie. Now that I’ve seen it, I can give you my opinion on it.

This new “Naked Gun” movie is one of those extremely popular reboot sequels that studios like to dish out. While the original starred the late great master of parody Leslie Nielson, this one stars the well-known type-cast action star who inadvertently became a parody of himself, Liam Neeson who plays the new version of the character Frank Drebin, Frank Drebin, Jr. who follows in his father’s footsteps as the detective of Police Squad, who tries to solve a big murder case that could save Police Squad from shutting down.

Well, as the tagline would suggest, this is by far the best parody movie that we’ve gotten in a very, very long time, in my opinion. Having said that, it is important to note that not every joke in this movie landed for me, but there were still plenty enough here that succeeded in making me laugh which automatically places this movie far above the terrible era of Friedberg and Seltzer parody movies that we had to endure for a long while.

While their movies heavily relied on random IP characters as jokes, this one actually relies on actual jokes of many varieties. It’s got slapstick, it’s got wordplay, it even has the occasional random out-of-place gag here and there that makes you think to yourself, “What the heck?” but what I think is most important with all of these styles of jokes is the execution and the way they were executed made it feel as though it was cut from the same cloth as the original “Naked Gun” movie which is something I expect fans of the original will appreciate watching this new one.

Liam Neeson understood the assignment and handled it well. He was genuinely funny in this movie. It does the heart good to know that a type-cast action star who does the same thing in a lot of movies to the point of absurdity and takes it and flips it on its head to make an intentional comedic version of it and have a good laugh at himself. The movie also features Panama Anderson, Paul Walker Hausen, Danny Hudson, and Kevin Duran Duran. Oops! Sorry! I meant Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter, Hauser, Danny Huston, and Kevin Durand. They were all good and provided plenty of comedic moments in the film as well.

Overall, I really enjoyed this new “Naked Gun” movie. I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t make me laugh, and I am no liar. Anyone who said otherwise is the true liar, but not me. I only lie when absolutely nessacary. Is that how you spell that? My autocorrect isn’t working. Why is it that none of us know how to spell that word correctly from memory? It’s always that one word. That and “recieve”. I never know if the “I” comes before or after the “e” and it’s always so embarrassing when you get it wrong. Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked. 

“The Naked Gun” was good, and I genuinely enjoyed it. Any fans of the original “Naked Gun” will certainly enjoy this new “Naked Gun”. Even the audience I watched it with seemed to have had a great time with it. As I was watching, I couldn’t help but notice that the trailer showed moments of blood that made me think that this was going to be an R-rated movie, but much to my surprise, the blood that was shown in the trailer was edited out of the finished product resulting in a PG-13 rating. Perhaps this could mean an “unrated” version of the film for the home release, which would be fun to see, but I digress. Anyone missing the old school style of parody filmmaking should definitely check this one out when it releases in theaters this weekend. Before I went, I just wanted to say… good luck. We’re all counting on you. Wait, that’s “Airplane”. Damn it!

3 ½ stars

Nick Nitkowski