Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun legacy sequel premiered to a rollicking reception, earning rave reviews (with a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing) with some prognosticators even suggesting the entire future of theatrical comedies may depend on its success. Whether it leads to a revival of mid-budget comedy movies in theaters remains to be seen, but it’s already shaping up to be a solid relaunch for the 30-year-old franchise.
The movie likely wouldn’t have worked at all without a star capable of filling the shoes of the legendary Leslie Nielsen, and luckily, Liam Neeson is just the guy for the job, and not just because they share initials. The two stars actually have more in common than it may appear, and their career trajectories are a big part of what made each of them such an inspired choice to anchor The Naked Gun‘s brand of absurd humor. Sometimes, seriousness really is the better part of silliness.
Neeson and Nielsen’s Shift From Serious to Silly
For the first couple of decades of his career, Leslie Nielsen made a name for himself as a square-jawed, smooth-voiced dramatic actor, popping up in roles in sci-fi films like Forbidden Planet, westerns like Gunfight in Abilene, and disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure. He rarely took on a leading role, but he was a reliable source of gravitas. This was exactly the reason why the comic team of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker tapped him to star in their film Airplane!, using his stoic seriousness to comic effect.
Nielsen was cast alongside other cinematic tough guys like Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, and Peter Graves, none of whom were exactly known for comedy at that time. This is a large part of why Airplane! was so funny in 1980, and why it’s still funny today. The actors don’t “act funny,” but rather play the absurd material completely straight, as if they were in a regular disaster movie. Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker knew they had a winner on their hands, and cast Nielsen once again in their cop show spoof Police Squad! in 1982. Six years later, Nielsen reprised his role as Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun and was pretty much a comedy mainstay for the rest of his career.
Neeson has probably done more comedy than Nielsen before taking on The Naked Gun, joining the Seth McFarlane cinematic universe in 2014’s A Million Ways to Die in the West and playing another self-aware cop in The Lego Movie. But despite these occasional detours, he’s firmly established himself as the go-to guy for largely unfunny thrillers like The Commuter and The Ice Road series, basically setting the “aging action star” template followed by everyone from J.K. Simmons to Allison Janney. Time will tell if Neeson makes a Nielsen-sized swing into goofball territory, but his casting as Frank Drebin Jr. similarly plays off his established tough guy credentials.
Why Seriousness Can Be So Funny
It’s well known among comedians and comic actors that, if you want something to be truly funny, you have to play it as if it’s the most serious thing in the world. When an actor is trying to elicit a laugh, it falls flat more often than not because they lose the emotional truth of the scene. Even off-the-wall movies like Airplane! or The Naked Gun still need emotional stakes, allowing the humor to arise out of the characters and the situation more organically.
In the case of a spoof, this is even more important because the entire movie is essentially winking at the audience. It also creates an opportunity to subvert the viewer’s expectations, seeing a character taking such absurd situations so seriously. Nielsen started to slip off of this particular acting tightrope later in his career, hamming it up in bargain-basement spoofs like Spy Hard and 2001: A Space Travesty, losing the sense of seriousness that made his turn in Airplane! such a revelation, though it probably didn’t help that most of them weren’t that funny to begin with.
As avowed Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker fans, both Akiva Schaffer and producer Seth MacFarlane no doubt understand the importance of this approach when taking on The Naked Gun (MacFarlane said as much to Entertainment Weekly last month), and Neeson might be the only actor who could convincingly pull it off. He’s certainly got gravitas for days, as well as a willingness to poke fun at his own public image, kicking butt in a little girl’s dress with the same commitment he brought to fighting off a pack of wolves. The Naked Gun is now in theaters.
