Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are sure to heat up the summer box office!
The newly confirmed real-life couple stars in The Naked Gun, the latest action-packed installment in the long-running comedy franchise. Luckily, critics seem to be loving the dynamic duo in the police romp, which opens in theaters on August 1.
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In a glowing review from TheWrap, critic William Bibbiani praised Neeson for his comedic chops as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. while also giving Anderson, who portrays Beth, her flowers. "Matching Neeson joke for joke is Pamela Anderson, in the middle of a well-deserved career renaissance after her haunting, award-winning performance in Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl. She already proved she can handle drama. Now she's reminding us that she is and always was, a skilled comedian," he wrote.
Johnny Oleksinski for the New York Post called the flick "the biggest surprise of the year" in his rave review. "[Anderson] and Neeson have great chemistry … which comes as less of a shock after recent news reports that they're an item. Most vital, both play their parts without winks or self-awareness," he wrote.
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The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney highlighted Neeson's stellar performance but added how the jokes weren't as funny as they could be. "The actor's dead serious delivery provides a subtle meta underlay as Frank Jr. takes down bad guys and tackles a master criminal, starting with a bank robbery prologue whose funniest jokes are given away in the trailer," he wrote. "Luckily, Neeson and Anderson have enough spark to carry the film, not to mention great chemistry."
In Variety's evaluation of the movie, Owen Gleiberman noted that he enjoyed the film but not as much as the original iteration from 1988. "The original Naked Gun was hilarious. It was a film that practically had audiences wetting their pants. The new Naked Gun, by contrast, is amusing. What it won't do the way these movies once used to is shock you into laughter," he wrote.
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Indiewire's David Ehrlich, meanwhile, thought the film was "the funniest American movie in years." He gave it a solid B+.
"Inviting people to laugh their heads off together in public is one of the greatest and most galvanizing things the movies have the power to do and watching this one in a packed multiplex just a few days after sitting through Happy Gilmore 2 in silence on the couch at home should be enough to convince anyone that it's a crime for studios to let comedies go straight to streaming. Lucky for us, Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. is extremely on the case," he wrote.
