The Social World

Tag: Hollywood

  • The new Naked Gun is actually funny

    As the lights went down for The Naked Gun – the “legacy sequel” to the spoof cop franchise – I found myself praying: “Please God, let it be deliciously and relentlessly stupid or I will be heartbroken.” I was not hopeful. I never am when it comes to a “legacy sequel.” What they usually mean by “legacy sequel” is: a “reboot.” But within the first few minutes I heard a strange noise and felt a peculiar sensation and realized I was laughing. It happened quite a few times more, in fact. I was as surprised as anybody. Even though the third act drags a bit and Liam Neeson is no Leslie Nielsen (despite their pleasingly similar names), any film that has “Set Dressing” listed in the end credits followed by “Ranch, Vinaigrette, Blue Cheese…” gets my vote.

    Produced by Seth McFarlane (creator of Family Guy), it’s the fourth film in the franchise and comes 31 years after the previous instalment. (Is no IP ever safe?) Neeson stars as Frank Drebin Jr., son of the character Nielsen portrayed. He has followed his father into LA’s police squad and this apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. (Drebin Sr. was once described as “having a heart of gold and a brain of wood.”) He interviews a suspect: “You got 20 years for man’s laughter? Must have been quite a joke.” “You mean manslaughter?” (You do have to channel your inner 13-year-old.)

    Reviewing this film is like reviewing a whoopee cushion. It’s not here to make us think. There are no themes to analyze. It just wants to make us happy. And if a joke doesn’t land or is familiar – “May I speak freely?” “I prefer English” – that doesn’t matter, as another one will be along in 15 seconds or thereabouts. Do we care about the plot? We do not. But I know I have a duty so… It opens with an armed bank robbery where the target is a gadget stored in a safe deposit box. The gadget’s intended use is not yet known but it does have “P.L.O.T  D.EV.I.C.E” written on it, and there was my first laugh, right there. Drebin turns up disguised as a schoolgirl, and biffs everyone while attired in a tiny kilt. He returns to headquarters where there is a portrait of his dad on one of the walls. “I want to be like you,” he says to it, “but also completely original.”

    The baddie is an Elon Musk-style villain (Danny Huston) who sits astride a tech company and wishes to take over the world. Pamela Anderson plays Drebin’s love interest and, while not known for her comedy chops, this is all so good-natured it brings out her funny side. (Priscilla Presley, who appeared in the first three films, features momentarily). There are some decent visual gags. I particularly liked the crane that turns up to remove a car from a lake. It’s like a giant fairground grabber; it picks the car up, then promptly drops it. You know it’s coming but it’s impossible to not laugh.

    While Neeson narrates gravely and offers a deadpan performance, the gags keep on coming. That captures the spirit of the original as Drebin can never be in on the joke. He has to be oblivious to the chaos his idiocy causes. But Neeson is not a natural comedian in the way Nielsen was. It’s the beguiling innocence that’s missing, I think.

    The third act drags, alas, as it’s over-reliant on slapstick. But at a snappy 85 minutes the film won’t claim too much of your time. And don’t skip the credits. There are all sorts of nuggets hiding in there.

  • Gillian Anderson: Ice Queen

    Imagine, for a moment, that a respected middle-aged British male character actor – Jason Isaacs, let’s say – had been cast in the lead role of a sex therapist in a popular, Gen Z-focused Netflix series, called something like Love Lessons. Then imagine that Isaacs had become seemingly so obsessed with blurring the lines between himself and his character that he had not only edited a book about men’s sexual fantasies, anonymously including one of his own in there, too, but had begun a secondary career appearing on podcasts in which he encouraged men to freely discuss their peccadilloes and penchants, however taboo they might seem.

    It would, of course, never happen – not even for a man as likable as Isaacs. Yet something very similar has taken place with his Salt Path and Sex Education co-star Gillian Anderson, a woman who seems to have turned into her Sex Education character Jean Milburn, only with added froideur and grandeur. (Her Instagram profile, where she boasts 3.5 million followers, describes her as “Actor. Author. Activist. Dog Mum.”) When Anderson recently appeared on Davina McCall’s podcast Begin Again, the blurb gushed that “this episode is about giving yourself permission to explore your wildest fantasies, the power of desire and the importance of asking what you truly WANT – not only in the bedroom but in LIFE!”

    The territory of mom-fluencer of a certain age is hardly unknown, and Anderson cannot be blamed for embracing extra-curricular activities. Her most recent book, 2024’s Want, was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and she has segued smoothly into a career that has encompassed television, film and theatre, as well, now, as that of author. (We will draw a tactful veil over the trio of fantasy novels, The Earthend Saga, that she co-authored, or at least put her lucrative name to, between 2014 and 2016.) She is one of the best-known actresses in Britain, thanks to her star-making role in The X Files and her subsequent high profile, and remains a sought-after A-list guest at any party or soirée. So why, then, is Gillian Anderson so difficult to warm to?

    Most actors try and give an impression of warmth and likability in press interviews and in public appearances on things like The Graham Norton Show. Even if, privately, they detest everyone around them and consider themselves part of a rarified species, they have been given extensive media training to make themselves seem down-to-earth and accessible. Anderson, however, has gone entirely the other way. If ever she is compelled to appear on a chat show, she wears an air of regal hauteur that suggests that she regards the whole affair as deeply beneath her, and carries this sense of superiority into interviews. Journalists use the words “frosty” or “steely” in profiles about her; a polite way of describing someone who clearly has little interest in ingratiating herself with those who she finds beneath her.

    Why is Gillian Anderson so difficult to warm to?

     If Anderson’s work was consistently extraordinary, she might be forgiven much of this aloofness. Many of the greatest actors in history could not be described as “nice”, from Marlene Dietrich to Tommy Lee Jones. Anderson would also probably argue that it is a misogynistic canard that she should have to be seen as warm and fuzzy because she is a woman. She might, of course, be right, but the difficulty is that she is a variable screen talent, to say the least.

    Anderson was indeed magnificent in Terence Davies’s little-seen Edith Wharton adaptation The House of Mirth, and gave very fine performances indeed in both the BBC’s adaptation of Bleak House and the serial killer drama The Fall, which both made use of her icy beauty and cool intelligence. But she was devastatingly bad as Margaret Thatcher in the fourth series of The Crown, pitching her performance just this side of pantomime in an apparent attempt to convince viewers that she, herself, was nothing like this dreadful woman that she was playing, and that she didn’t share an iota of her politics or thoroughly reprehensible views.

    By the time that Anderson popped up in Sex Education, an enjoyable if silly show that overstayed its welcome, it was clear that she had come to regard herself as a Great British Institution; ironic, really, for a woman born in Chicago and who rose to prominence playing American characters. So it is amusing that her most recent performance may yet turn out to be one of her most controversial.

    Anderson and Isaacs played Raynor and Moth Winn, the beleaguered protagonists of The Salt Path, in the successful film adaptation of the book, which has since run into trouble after the revelations that Winn had been more than a little economical with the actualité. Ironically, Anderson had already inadvertently conveyed her own misgivings about Winn, saying in an interview that: “I was surprised at how guarded she was…it was interesting to encounter a certain steeliness.” Or, indeed, a fear that being lifted to another level of recognition altogether would lead to her subsequent exposure by the British newspaper the Observer.

    Anderson has not commented publicly on the scandal, and it is unlikely that she will be prepared to do so until it is settled one way or the other. Yet were she to break her silence, and admit that she felt annoyed, even betrayed, by the undeniably embarrassing situation, it would be a rare chink in the armor of this ice queen, sex therapist and, it would appear, all-round Renaissance woman. Just a tinge of vulnerability, you cannot help thinking, would make the Magnificent Anderson that bit more human, and therefore likable. Whether it will ever happen, however, is a mystery worthy of Agent Scully’s investigative powers.