Recommendations of the Editorial team
Liam Neeson is 73. Ten years older than Leslie Nielsen in 1989 in his role as Frank Drebbin in “The Naked Cam”. But he looks ten years younger than Nielsen at the time. Nielsen is that man with the pensioner-soft facial features, the de-niro-long earlobe and the dog-dofol view (if the role requires). Men aged faster earlier than today. Today everything is easier. No growing up in or after the Second World War, a healthier lifestyle, better hair implants, and of course, better image processing of your bodies in the cinema.
Enough with the ageism. Actually, the reboot of the “naked cannon” is a film without Ageism. Pamela Anderson, the adored of the 73-year-old Liam Neeson, is 58. His lieutenant Frank Drebbin raves about her body as if she were 18. And that is not even meant as a gag. A soothing geriatric sign. Just as beneficial as the fact that Drebbin himself never shows as a frail man who is creating age. He punches and climbs – and does not moan. It is called “Physical Comedy” when people dislike themselves.
The term “gag quota” was created for films such as “The Naked Cam”, then a ZAZ production and now in the hands of co-producer Seth MacFarlane. “20 gags per minute”, and so on. The new cannon film also wants to “fulfill” this “quota”, and just like its predecessor films, it works more, sometimes less. The following applies here: GAG quota of, let’s say, 55 percent fulfilled.
Classic humor, timeless comedy
What has remained the same: Almost everything is performed in sugar-abrahams sugar tradition with straight face. There is a hospital scene in which Drebbin wants to press information from a villain. If this scene had no sound, it could go through as a thriller. This is perfect straight face.
This film has some punches-but no meta levels. No joke that you have to think about twice. A blessing. “The naked cannon” also contains a lot of “Easter Eggs”, i.e. small hints in the background, where the actual action often takes place.
A flat-joke film with word games, which unfortunately circulating as “Dad Jokes” today, which is very unfair, today’s dad Joker can be found, especially in the age cohort of Generation X (1964-1980), that generation with the best humor, the greatest resistance and a focus for which the generation is just because the X-Er in good reels show that almost every Dua-Lipa hit is “excessively inspired” by larger hits from the 1980s. The first “naked cannon” film used exactly this generation X of the then 9 to 25 year olds. It is still unclear whether today’s children laugh over the reboot.
“Lieutenant Frank Drebbin!” Calls the Hi-Tech CEO Cane (Danny Huston) as a greeting. “Yes,” says Drebbin, “that’s what my name is!”. So such jokes. And they are funny. The humor of most of today’s films is said to be subversive, politically, tailored to certain groups. Fortunately, this has no message.
Dignified handling of age
A comedy like in the 1980s, even with an 80s film duration of less than 90 minutes. In addition, a brilliant nightmare sequence initiated by “Ted” creator Seth MacFarlane with a snowman awakened to life. The actual story-Frank Drebbin is investigating a tech mogul that wants to make humanity into Stephen-King- “Cell”-like zombies-is not that interesting.
On the net, a scene from a Liam-Neeson action film at least ten years old is circulating, in which it climbs over a fence within five seconds, but this tedious movement sequence consists of 15 film settings. That means: Neeson himself hadn’t made it over it in a single attempt. Cuts veil his attempt, maybe they also disguise that Neeson did not do the stunt itself. “The naked cannon”, a comedy, deals far more dignified with aging.