'Naked Gun' loads up on jokes

  Liam Neesen and Pamela Anderson deliver a serviceable -- if remarkably belated -- entry into The Naked Gun dumb-comedy sweepstakes.  

 Because the series, which began in 1988, hasn't spawned a sequel since 1994, it's tempting to think a new edition might be pointless. Not quite. 

  If nothing else, Naked Gun’s 2025 version reminds us of the kind of comedy that swept through theaters, beginning when Airplane! took flight in 1980. Credit creators David Zucker, Jim Abrahams (now deceased), and Jerry Zucker, the team that started the ball rolling and which had nothing to do with this imitative successor.

   Working from a screenplay by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, director Akiva Schaffer adopts the joke-laden approach the material demands, piling on enough dumb gags to stock several comedies. If one joke doesn't make you laugh, hang on; another quickly will be nipping at its heels.

     Neeson winks at his intensely focused action roles with his portrayal of Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., son of the original detective Drebin, who was played by the late (and irreplaceable) Leslie Nielsen. Neeson continues in the spirit of the original, which is to say he happily surrenders to the screenplay’s foolishness, layering his performance with faux gravitas.

   For her part, Anderson strikes jokey femme fatale poses that peak with a funny impromptu nightclub performance of a ridiculously extended jazz vocal.

   The rest of cast is used to meager effect. Paul Walter Hauser, as Frank's sidekick, and CCH Pounder, as the chief of Los Angeles' generically named Police Squad, don't have much to do. Danny Huston plays the villain, a tech mogul who provides an excuse to add jokes about highly automated electric cars.

    Unfortunately, the trailer spoils the boldly absurd joke that opens the movie, but it can be fun listening to the characters take words at their most literal.

     "Take a seat,'' says Drebin to Anderson's Beth. She does, dragging one out of the police station.

      As if to squeeze every last drop out of the movie's nonstop jokiness, a stream of mostly clever gags are sprinkled throughout the end credits.

      Bad comedies can be painful. I didn't feel that way about Naked Gun, but a question arises. Why did the movie's accumulation of gags leave me feeling less than blown away? My answer: Its irreverence needed better targets.

      Unlike the earlier movies, which bit the hand that fed them by lampooning Hollywood's addiction to multiplex-filling formula, this one relies on fan service, nostalgia, and the hope that in era of smart devices, dumb humor can offer dopey relief. 

       No matter how audiences react to Naked Gun, few will accuse the movie of overstaying its welcome. The movie clocks in at a refreshing 85 minutes, almost a short by today's bloated standards.

  

Andy Samberg hip hops for laughs

A rapper falls on hard times.

I wanted to laugh.

And I often did, but Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping -- Andy Samberg's new comedy -- isn't uproariously funny and its cascading series of musical parodies certainly can't touch the winner and still champion mock-doc satire, This is Spinal Tap.

Put another way, Samberg hasn't made Spinal Tap for the Hip-Hop generation.

That's not to say that the movie, which is stocked with a surfeit of musicians and SNL vets, doesn't occasionally strike gold -- or at least a significant amount of gold plate.

Hamburg plays Conner4Real, a rapper who broke into the business with two boyhood pals (Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), teen-agers who hit it big with a group called Style Boyz.

After the breakup, Conner enjoys some solo success, but his eagerly awaited second album tanks.

Somber, Taccone and Schaffer are all members of The Lonely Island, the trio that created SNL Digital Shorts, comic videos that fans will recognize as precursors to this full-length effort.

As a promotional scheme and commercial tie-in, Conner's management team signs a misguided agreement with an appliance company named AquaSpin. Every time an AquaSpin appliance is turned on, a Conner4Real song plays. The result: global power outages and rampant hostility toward Conner.

A strong comic cast, mostly underutilized, supports Stamberg's efforts. Tim Meadows plays Conner's manager), Sarah Silverman, his publicist and Maya Rudolph, a representative of the appliance company that goes into partnership with Conner. Bill Hader has a small part as a roadie and guitar wrangler.

You'll also see lots of real musicians: Questlove, Mariah Carey, Ringo Starr, Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, Seal, D.J. Khaled, Usher, 50 Cent, Pharrell Williams and more.

The movie's collection of pop stars and rappers adds satirical weight. They talk with reverence about the StyleBoyz, an obvious joke because it's difficult to imagine that this group of white nerds could have made it big in the world of rap -- even by appropriating black styles.

In the album that flops, Conner goes way wrong with his choices. The main tune on his new album -- Not Gay -- is a belated cry for gender equality that lands with a thud, even with Conner's supposed genius for creating memorable catchphrases.

Much effort has gone into the movie's production numbers, presented as part of the sagging star's tour of the nation's arenas. The tour, by the way, eventually is hijacked by Conner's opening act, Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd).

A Sacramento-bred suburban kid, Conner's egotistical personality seems less imaginatively conceived than some of the movie's rap lyrics.

Some of those lyrics are clever in a rude sort of way. I enjoyed a scene at an awards show that results in confusion over which crew is shooting which star's behind-the-scenes documentary. There's also something audaciously crazy about the idea that a rapper would write a song based on the way Spanish is spoken in Spain -- with a "lisp," says Conner.

So how do we sum up Popstar? Mostly sunny with sprinkles of laughs and no real taste for the rabid bite of satire.