Naked Gun/Police Squad

Actually, the trend in the current comedy era seems to be all straight men. Will Ferrell et al, what makes them funny, or ostensibly funny, is that they never break character. In a movie like Old School he's trotted out to be silly, but in most of his other movies he's acting silly, but doing so seriously. The other actors, too. It's sort of this post SNL mentality of the humor coming from them not cracking up, no matter how ridiculous the movie around them.

Will Ferrell is a good example, except there's always this just detectable, knowing smirk behind everything. He's funny but he always comes off to me like the school cut-up rather than an actor. Sometimes I wish he could be a little more subtle.

xpost Yeah, Wills Ferrell & Forte, Fred Armisen, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd...whether their respective styles do it for you or not, they're all pretty good at a straight delivery when that's what they're going for. I'd still argue that they're the exception.

Armisen, you could always see on SNL, would fall just short of making eye contact. He'd always be doing some goofy act, but looking just past the people he was talking to, to keep it straight.

Carrell, too, plays it straight a lot. If anything, shows like The Office and Parks & Rec are the same sort of thing, playing it straight in ridiculous situations.

Armisen, you could always see on SNL, would fall just short of making eye contact. He'd always be doing some goofy act, but looking just past the people he was talking to

This is because he was reading cue cards

You don't need to avoid eye contact in order to "play it straight"!

I think Carrell is a much better actor than most of the SNL crew. There's been something amateurish about most of the SNL cast for years now. Armisen is kind of bad.

Actually a good example of a "funny straight man" imo is Kevin Nealon. I always thought he was great and underappreciated.

xpost No, it was something else. They all dart around for cue cards, but Armisen has his own straight man tiks. He does it live, and on "Portlandia" ...

It always makes him look a little cross-eyed.

I watched the first one again last night. SO GOOD. Now watching 2 1/2. I forgot Robert Goulet is in this!

Quentin Hapsburg: Que sera sera... You do speak French, don't you?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Unfortunately no, but I do kiss that way.

Also Ed Helms is probably the worst possible choice. Like whereas Neilsen delivers that "Mr. Poopy Pants" line in such a great deadpan way, you can just picture Ed Helms trying way too hard to be cute.

I nominate Robert Forster.

Ed Hocken: [as Savage is surrounded] All right, Savage! What do you want?
Hector Savage: I want a car out front! Something fun. A Porsche! Then I want a plane ticket to Jamaica. And I want a nice hotel. No touristy place. Something really indicative of the people and their culture.

Banquet Doorman: Your coat, sir?
Lt. Frank Drebin: Yes, it is. And I have a receipt to prove it.

^This feels like a Groucho homage!

They sneak into the presidential ceremony dress like a mariachi band, and then they almost get caught and end up improvising an amazing version of "Besame Mucho" to get out of it. So good! I wonder if that's really Leslie Neilsen singing.

Also, is it me or does Lloyd Bridges make a cameo earlier as his stunt double? When he falls through the skylight it sort of looks like him for a minute.

And they spin their guitars like ZZ Top.

BEEEEESSAME

(hey!)

BESAME MUUUUUCHO

while 33 1/3 is the weakest, I love the untouchables/potemkin opening scene

(mouths) "MY BABY!"
...
(mouths) "MY LAWNMOWER!"

I guess love is like the ozone layer, you never miss it 'til it's gone.

END ZONE LAYER

Hector Savage: I want a car out front! Something fun. A Porsche! Then I want a plane ticket to Jamaica. And I want a nice hotel. No touristy place. Something really indicative of the people and their culture.

man this joke holds up

might wanna read this unproduced script from PS! vet David Misch

HOCKEN
Frank, I'm afraid you'd better
prepare yourself for something
sickening.

DREBIN
You're not going to read from Kahlil
Gibran again, are you?

http://davidmisch.com/images/TVPSTestimonyOfTerror.pdf

saw it the other day. can totally visualize the episode just from that script, altho obviously they recycled some of the gags for the movies

“Assault with a concrete dildo!”

I'm a locksmith, and ... I'm a locksmith.

Wait, wut?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Gun_(2025_film)

They should've tried for Liam Neeson.

― Flute Juice (Old Lunch), Monday, December 16, 2013 7:10 AM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Old Lunch called it 11 years ago.

Neeson as Good Cop / Bad Cop in the Lego Movie does give me some hope...

After the talk above (ten years ago!) about Vin Diesel - John Cena might be pretty good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFhpctuUwb4

Old Lunch called it 11 years ago.

― Hideous Lump, Wednesday, October 9, 2024 1:04 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

OMG, lol. I can't believe that I willed this of all things into existence. At least Akiva Schaffer is involved so I don't feel quite so much like I have to preemptively apologize.

Ricky Gervais might be an ass, but we can thank him for revealing Neeson's straight-man comedy chops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvVFvqd3lqA

based on an original story written by Seth MacFarlane, who produced

hopefully Akiva Schaffer can cancel this out and then some, otherwise gonna be a sad situation

for some reason I love the episode so much where Frank becomes a nightclub singer. ALso seeing Leslie Nielson in a serious role is very weird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet

Tony De Wonderful?

based on an original story written by Seth MacFarlane, who produced
hopefully Akiva Schaffer can cancel this out and then some, otherwise gonna be a sad situation

looking at decade-long production history for this on wikipedia doesn't inspire much hope that this will be any good, unfortunately

Also, that it is a reboot of a dormant franchise whose creative linchpins are not involved and whose iconic star is dead? We might have a Pink Panther situation on our hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPL5PiQUw0

Just saw a TV trailer for the Seth MacFarlane remake (sequel?). I gotta say, the O.J. joke drew a genuine "Whoa" from me--I'm really pretty non-plussed by stuff like that, more than most, I think, but I'm surprised they'd venture there with so many Goldmans and Browns still alive.

Let's anticipate the new Naked Gun film starring AI Liam Neeson

I would base my expectations on the past work of Dan Gregor, Doug Mand and Akiva Schaffer, together and separately, more than on that of someone who lost their screenplay credit after WGA arbitration

(I didn’t know Macfarlane had previously written a draft until the above post)

So it's going to be as good as the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers movie.

The trailer I saw on Sunday was DREADFUL. The point is, Liam Neeson's a good actor, while Leslie Nielsen sucked. Neeson kept winking at the audience. I did laugh at a sight gag, though.

Movie is less than 90 minutes, a plus, but looks terrible, a negative.

Looks good, tbh. Laughed at the OJ Simpson gag, laughed at the many handed poster with "no AI was used in the making of this poster".

Some positive murmurings on X from people who saw it..

‘The Naked Gun’ is so deliciously stupid, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Very true to the spirit of the Leslie Nielsen movies I grew up loving. #NakedGun pic.twitter.com/RXbSSIPVr5

— Katcy Stephan (@katcystephan) July 15, 2025

I saw The Naked Gun and I can now say they ARE making them like they used to! There are so many great jokes in this and you can tell the filmmakers had so much fun making an actual comedy movie. #NakedGun pic.twitter.com/uPWtfM1dE2

— Jeffrey Vega (@jeffreyvega) July 15, 2025

cool! Reminds me why I don't watch or trust trailers.

I mean, I hope it's funny, but you see those sorts of positive embargo-respecting one liner social media blurbs in advance of literally everything.

The trailer I saw on Sunday was DREADFUL. The point is, Liam Neeson's a good actor, while Leslie Nielsen sucked. Neeson kept winking at the audience.

I kind of thought that the trailer looked promising, mainly because Neeson seemed to be playing it straight, like Leslie Nielsen in Airplane/Police Squad, and *not* winking at the audience, like Leslie Nielsen by the end of the original Naked Gun series?

Nielsen got worse by the time he made the third film; he thought he was a comic actor or something.