Parody movies haven’t been too popular for well over a decade. And you can thank the horrible filmmaking duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer for that. When Scary Movie became a big hit during the summer of 2000, they had the clout as the co-writers of a hit movie.
Except there was one problem. They were co-writers in credit only. According to Marlon Wayans, who co-starred and co-wrote the movie, his brother, Keenan Ivory Wayans, didn’t incorporate anything from a script Friedberg and Seltzer had written parodied horror movies as well. This was probably a case of a studio having two similar scripts and to avoid a lengthy and costly arbitration with the Writers Guild of America, they were given credit on the movie.
Needless to say, Friedberg and Seltzer spent the rest of the 2000s churning out some of the worst movies of the decade. And considering just how terrible the decade was for the cinema, that’s no hyperbole. You have to hand it to Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers who didn’t waste anytime writing the review for their 2010 Twilight parody Vampires Suck with just three words “This sucks more.”
Since then, their movies have flown under the radar with little attention and they haven’t made a movie since 2015, which seemed like a parody of the Fast and Furious movies which by then wasn’t a hard attempt. Mel Brooks who was one of the pioneers of the parody genre said you have to love the movies you’re making fun of. The genre reached its peak in the early to mid-1990s as Brooks, his friend and collaborator Carl Reiner and the comedy troupe of Jerry Zucker-Jim Abrahams-David Zucker all released movies parodying most other genres of that time.
David Zucker has publicly criticize the psuedo-reboot/psuedo-legacy sequel The Naked Gun. And he does have some good reasons to. The original 1988 was based on a failed 1982 series Police Squad with Leslie Nielsen. The series was a parody of the old-fashioned police procedural TV shows with Nielsen delivering his drab deadpan delivery as Lt. Frank Drebin. In many ways, he looked and dressed the part of this type of archetype. And Nielsen was happier than a kid in a candy store to do comedy as he was known around Hollywood for being a prankster. He also was just being offered roles as fathers and grandfathers by the 1980s.
The newer version, which is produced by Seth MacFarlane a fan of ZAZ humor and movies, isn’t the great movie the 1988 was. But it has a lot of the same tone and style of the sequels so the jokes mostly hit with laughs or a smile at the cleverness. With Liam Neeson taking over as Frank Drebin Jr., he understands the assignment just like Nielsen. The joke isn’t always about the punchline but more about the delivery.
As most people have noted, Neeson is 73 more than twice the age of a child born to his parents int he third movie released in 1994. But I think that’s part of the humor. As Frank Jr., he manages to convey the same cliched tropes Nielsen did without having to turn to camera and wink or just reminding us of the reference over and over the way Ready Player One did. And as he’s shown in Ted 2 and A Million Ways to Die in the West, he knows a lot about how to deliver the jokes and punchlines.
There’s a funny running gag of someone always handing Drebin a cup of coffee, even when he is currently drinking out of one. And Drebin has the same aloof nonchalant demeanor to things around him as his father. He seems to be causing more trouble than he’s aware. It helps that Neeson has spent the last 15 years mostly making movies where he is a violent man seeking revenge.
The plot has to do with a wealthy software engineer, Richard Cane (Danny Huston), collaborating with the world’s most richest people to release some device that converts people to their primitive nature. Yes, I know it sounds like the same thing that was used in the first Kingsman movie. But so what?
Asking for originality in a parody movie is like searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.
Drebin is joined with his captain, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), who sometimes becomes victim to Drebin’s blundering. I like that Hauser is younger than Neeson. They both have a great chemistry together. Hauser is also another actor who can switch between comedy and drama very easily.
And Neeson knocks it out of the park with Pamela Anderson as his love interest, Beth Davenport, a writer who approaches Drebin about the investigation into the death of her brother. Anderson, just like Priscilla Presley, seemed to understand that what her role was. And considering that Neeson and Anderson got a little closer off screen, it helps.
There’s some jokes that some people might not like because they don’t fit the style of the original. There’s one gag involving an infrared binoculars which is similar to the shadow gags in the Austin Powers movies. The original 1988 version is probably the best and is a nice companion to the brilliant Airplane! which co-starred Nielsen and was made by ZAZ.
Comedy movies, in general, are going through a rough patch unless someone really popular is in the lead. Most of them are being dumped on streaming services mostly. With the rise of Internet personalities and TikTok creators, it’s a brand new world where comics are bypassing the clubs and putting their bits online themselves.
But it’s a hard sell. That’s why you need a movie heralded by MacFarlane and directed by Akiva Schaffer, who also co-wrote the script. Schaffer has had some luck with comedy movies. But everything can go sideways without the casting of Neeson, Anderson, Hauser and even Huston. The main joke of Airplane! wasn’t the wacky and absurd gags, it was the casting of serious actors telling them. When you have Barbara Billingsley popping up on screen as a Jive-speaking interpreter, it’s a better joke.
The Naked Gun made over $100 million worldwide which is an impressive overhaul and a sequel is in the works. Hopefully, it hits as well as this one.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 