Grab it as you can: Enthusiastic praise of nonsense... as you can (****)

The history of cinema changed when a witty translator decided to turn Airplane ! into Airplane ! It's not clear whether this was the same person who transformed the bawdy Some Like It Hot into Some Like It Hot, or Love and Death into Boris Grushenko's Last Night. Be that as it may, it's a shame they didn't give him more chances. Who knows, maybe The Seventh Seal would have gone down in history as Die Hard , or Taxi Driver would now be known as You're Late for the Uber . The truth is that turning The Naked Gun into Naked Gun (Why Naked Gun?) Any Way You Can is the first step. The rest was, in effect, letting the thing roll.

The new version of the saga inaugurated by the trio Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker in 1988 first inspires caution. Perhaps laziness. Leslie Nielsen, may he rest in peace, is missing, and the OJ Simpson stain is, to say the least, thick. If we add to that the fact that the film is part of the tiresome ritual, or just obsession, that has recently hijacked the screen ( Superman , Karate Kid, Stranger Things... ), which basically consists of yearning for the very reactionary '80s, all the omens are, from the outset, funereal. And yet, there is a surprise. It works, it works however you can.

Director Akiva Schaffer embraces the genre's time-honored tenets, giving all the prominence to the physical gag, the parody of genre film's most stale clichés, and the audience's complicity through the now routine breaking of the fourth wall. But Schaffer also incorporates into the "any way you can" ideology much of what he learned from series he's been among the directors for, such as I Think You Should Leave or, most notably, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is nothing more than an extreme reworking of, precisely, the adventures of Lieutenant Frank Drebin. Let's just say that the radical determination evident in both to come up with something (series or film) impossible to recommend, absurd, deliberately badly written, cruel for the sake of sheer enjoyment, and so idiotic that it short-circuits from the first joke is there. It's there in a nuanced way and without nullifying the desire to reach all audiences, but it's there. It's there any way you can.

Now we're telling the story of Drebin's son, played incomprehensibly (if only because of his age) by Liam Neeson, ready to shatter any preconceived ideas we have about the protagonist of Schindler's List or the long history of revenge films he's accustomed us to lately. Yes, it's him, but backwards. And at his side, Pamela Anderson, ready, just like her colleague, to laugh her head off at herself and at everything we've thought of the most famous of Baywatch actresses until now. The idea is to put an end to the apocalyptic plan in store for humanity by an Elon Musk-like figure played haphazardly by Danny Huston. Everything fits together for the simple reason that nothing makes sense, starting with the simply unbeatable joke about the fish men. Fish as you can.

As in old film noirs, our detective narrates in the first person and to the accompaniment of the obligatory jazz chords how strange everything around him seems. That is, how strange reality is, and, if we're being more specific, cinema itself. And from there, everything progresses gag after gag to God knows where. The scene with the very torrid infrared rays or the ending with our protagonist hanging from two illuminated balls ( sic ) are just two of those moments that are not clear whether to store in our memory forever or forget as soon as possible. It's true that pacing isn't the strong point of the film, or of the entire saga. Between one occurrence and another, the film gets lost in its own chaos in a manner as unpredictable as it is dizzying. Naked Gun is like that, and it always was. In fact, it took many of us years to accept that the saga was anything more than a watered-down imitation of the inimitable original Airplane! But time heals almost everything, and now we have to accept that this The Naked Gun is a very good parody of the parody that each of the three parts of the Naked Gun trilogy always was. Perhaps its correct title could be: Grab 'The Naked Gun' as you can . That, or, almost better, Grasping, Grab It as you can . That, or Grab What You Can, When You Can . That, or... Enough. Enough as you can.

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Director : Akiva Schaffer. Starring : Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston. Running time : 85 minutes. Nationality : United States.