The Naked Gun

Arriving a week after Adam Sandler’s depressing Happy Gilmore 2, fellow sequel The Naked Gun fares much better sidestepping the obstacles inherent in reboots and reheats that arrive after lengthy absences.

In need of fresh blood, considering the great Leslie Nielsen is no longer with us, the series receives a boost through the inspired casting of Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., who serves as the surprisingly ideal vessel for the spot-on resurrection of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker comedy by screenwriters Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer (who also directs).

A true chip off the ol’ block, Frank Jr.’s literal interpretations of other's words yield Nielsen-esque steady laughs while he's on the job at the LAPD’s Police Squad. As with ZAZ’s greatest hits, trying to accurately capture the jokes in a review is a fool’s errand. But it's safe to say that practically no subject is safe from silliness, be it a crime scene, police body cam footage, or the Black Eyes Peas.

While investigating a suspicious death with his fellow nepo-baby partner Ed Hocken Jr. (the ever-reliable Paul Walter Hauser), Frank meets his match in Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), who has similar, uh, brain functions. Their inevitable romance — which has some sweet commonalities with the stars’ real-life love story — manages to loop in the occult and some of the best sight gags in film since the Austin Powers trilogy.

Never mind that tech giant Richard Cane (Danny Huston) has an evil plan afoot that's basically the same population-thinning scheme as that of Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Kingsman: The Secret Service. It's a decent enough framework on which to hang the film’s laugh-a-minute antics — its macguffin is called a P.L.O.T. Device, for O.J.’s sake! A game-changing narrative isn't exactly on the menu, and yet by packing so much entertainment into 85 minutes when most modern comedies can barely get in under two hours, it kind of is game-changing.

And these are 85 full minutes, too. The Naked Gun is the rare movie that gives viewers plenty of reasons to sit through the end credits, and you’ll be glad that you did.

Grade: B-plus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Paramount Pictures)