Pop Culture Happy Hour : NPR

Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun.

Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

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Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun.

Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures

The Naked Gun franchise has always been a rapid-fire delivery system for gags, delivered straight-faced by a cop who doesn’t know that anything is funny. In the new Naked Gun movie, that role is handled by the very straight-faced Liam Neeson. With Pamela Anderson as his femme fatale, Neeson tries to save the world from, quite literally, a plot device. And like the original franchise, this Naked Gun is all about a joke pileup.

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