01-08-2025
The Naked Gun Spoofs ‘Genius Who's Gonna Save The World With His Electric Cars'. Whoever That Is
The reviews are in for the cop parody legacyquel The Naked Gun, and they're overwhelmingly positive. The movie is 'extremely funny,' reckons The Guardian. It's a film that 'has a better chance of producing a belly laugh than any in recent memory,' suggests Empire. 'The Naked Gun's joke-per-minute ratio is truly astounding,' reports Collider.
The Naked Gun, starting its theater run August 1, has a 91% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, from 170 reviews.
So, sure, get to this slapstick flick if you want to laugh your socks off, but there's another reason to go see it: there's tech. Lots of tech. Green tech. The film's villain is a megalomaniac billionaire CEO of an electric car company. An electric car company with driverless cars. An electric car company with driverless cars that crash in mysterious circumstances.
But the movie's evil billionaire isn't Elon Musk, it's Richard Kane (Danny Huston), a genius interested in men's sperm count and who's 'gonna save the world with his electric cars.'
No, definitely nothing like Elon Musk.
And while there's a spacesuit in the movie, and a humanoid robot—no doubt remote controlled by a human operator—there are no satellite dishes, brain implants, or tarnished social media sites. There are, however, plenty of fart jokes. Again, nothing at all like Elon Musk.
The Naked Gun series dates back to the 1982 cop parody show Police Squad! by Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker, collectively known as ZAZ. This was followed by three ZAZ-produced Naked Gun movies from the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s. In film number four—a non-ZAZ production—gravel-voiced Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the original's deadpanning Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen). He teams up with femme fatale Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) in a laugh-a-minute spectacle of slapstick, sight gags, and wordplay. The Oscar-nominated star of Schindler's List is subjected to visual sexual innuendo in Austin Powers-like silhouette gags that are knockout funny. There's also a series of running gags that get funnier and funnier.
The movie's apocalyptic plot hinges on a digital doohickey identified onscreen as the P.L.O.T. Device and operated by (it's-not-Musk-remember) Kane, who wants to reset a world he considers to be ruined: let the world's population fight themselves to oblivion, then build back better with a chosen few.
Before the gizmo gets activated, Kane gifts the Police Squad with a driverless electric cop car (it's not a Tesla, in reality it's a disguised Hyundai Ioniq 6). Earlier, Drebin Jr. had grumbled 'I remember when the only things that were electric were eels, chairs, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago.'
Evil genius Kane founded car maker Edentech 'to save the world' and has 'created technologies to rival the gods.'
Not at all like Musk's claims that Tesla will become the world's leading robotics company, ushering in the 'closest thing to heaven we can get on Earth.'
The Naked Gun pokes fun at driverless cars, but not EVs in general. Drebin Jr. hits a cyclist when driving his ICE car, and he does so again when sitting in the driverless cop car.
The movie's a hoot.
CREDITSDistribution: ParamountProduction company: Fuzzy DoorCast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu, Danny HustonDirector: Akiva SchafferScreenwriters: Dan Gregor, Doug Maud, Akiva SchafferProducers: Seth MacFarlane, Erica HugginsExecutive producers: Daniel M. Stillman, Akiva Schaffer, Pete Chiappetta, Anthony Tittanegro, Andrew LaryDirector of photography: Brandon TrostProduction designer: Bill BrzeskiCostume designer: Betsy HeimannMusic: Lorne BalfeEditor: Brian Scott OldsVisual effects supervisor: Ashley BettiniRated PG-13. Runtime: 1 hour 25 minutes
