In a fake public service announcement released alongside the revival of the classic Leslie Nielsen spoof franchise The Naked Gun, new star Liam Neeson begs us to take pity on the poor, endangered studio comedy. There are fewer now than ever before, and their decimation is robbing us of the precious opportunity to “share a smile, a laugh, and even the occasional groan with the people in [our] very own community”, he explains.
The Naked Gun, then, is the genre’s last stand. It’s a callback to one of the funniest trios to have ever operated – brothers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, aka ZAZ, who were also behind the spy spoof Top Secret! (1984) and the disaster movie spoof Airplane! (1980), the latter frequently cited as the funniest film ever made – and directed and co-written by Akiva Schaffer, one-third of ZAZ’s closest successors, The Lonely Island.
