Pamela Anderson Will Star Opposite Liam Neeson in 'The Naked Gun' Reboot
There are certain things in this world that are important to me. Dare I say, sacred. One of them is The Naked Gun films, the single greatest trilogy in the hardest movie genre to make good sequels in, comedy. With the exception of these, and the Austin Powers films, it's damned near impossible to find even a good second movie, never mind a third. For the most part, the writers have used up all their funniest, most inspired bits getting the first one off the ground. And each successive outing is either just repeating the same jokes (The Hanover 2 and 3), or nothing more than a reunion show (Anchorman 2).
That said, it's rare on this site that there's a subject that matters as much to me as the idea of a Naked Gun reboot where one of my coworkers got to it first and said everything would've said. Hubbs most certainly did with his take:
Philosophically, I'm against the idea. It's tempting fate to try to capture the magic of one of America's greatest cultural achievements. But then you look at the creative minds behind this, assume they have the proper reverence for the source material, and trust that it's in good hands. Then there's the examples of Liam Neeson doing deadpan comedy:
And there's reason to be at least cautiously optimistic.
Now we can add this newest update:
Well played, Seth MacFarlane. You've got me further interested. Pamela Anderson has a long and distinguished career of being the comic love interest. Which is a fine line to walk, trying to keep your balance between funny and sexy. Which nobody, and I cannot stress this enough, nobody did better than Priscilla Presley:
And at the tender age of 56, she's kept it very much together:
Besides, if they cast someone any younger, it would cross that line which is hard to define, but you know it when you see it: The one between plausible onscreen chemistry and just an old (Neeson is almost 72) fart creeping on someone young enough to be his daughter. So this choice works.
I'll add that a friend met someone who's working on this production who said everyone loves the script and the optimism around the set is off the charts. It had better be. When you're trying to fill the shoes of Leslie Neilsen and the incomparable team of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, you'll need all the positive energy you can muster.