The laughs land in ‘The Naked Gun’ reboot, but fall flat in ‘Freakier Friday’

Fewer and fewer mainstream comedies play in movie theaters these days, which is what I’d call a tragedy. In the post-pandemic era, the studios, figuring that audiences will only buy tickets to blockbusters and horror movies, have largely relegated laughter to the realms of TV and streaming.

It’s heartening, then, that The Naked Gun, a long-in-development reboot of the Leslie Nielsen-starring Police Squad! spoofs of the late ’80s and ’90s, has made its way into theaters. Even more heartening: The new movie recaptures more of its predecessors’ spirit — the rapid-fire gags, the goofy slapstick, the non-sequitur silliness — than I would have thought possible.

It stars Liam Neeson, which, given how close that sounds to Leslie Nielsen, is funny in and of itself. Neeson, who’s spent much of the past decade reinventing himself as an action star, here plays Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. — and yes, he’s the son of Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin Sr.

Like his father, Drebin Jr. is a bumbling embarrassment who works for the LAPD’s elite Police Squad division. Along with his partner, Capt. Ed Hocken Jr. — a very good Paul Walter Hauser — he’s soon sucked into a cheerfully nonsensical plot involving a bank robbery, a dead body and a sinister billionaire who owns an electric-car company, played by Danny Huston. That’s not the only detail that winks at current headlines. This Drebin has to wear a body camera, which mainly exists to set up an extended chili-dog flatulence gag that I probably laughed at harder than I should’ve.

The movie was directed and co-written by Akiva Schaffer, of the comedy trio The Lonely Island. He sticks pretty close to the original Naked Gun template, even when he’s sending it up, as he does with a quick reference to O.J. Simpson, a fixture of the three earlier films.

Pamela Anderson fills the Priscilla Presley role of Drebin’s love interest, playing a crime novelist named Beth Davenport. Anderson is terrific here, whether she’s scatting up a storm in a nightclub or gamely committing to some crude innuendo involving Neeson and a turkey baster. And I haven’t even mentioned the jealous killer snowman who tries to derail Drebin and Beth’s budding romance. Don’t worry, I’ve spoiled nothing; it has to be seen to be believed.

The Naked Gun isn’t the only new L.A.-set farce that tries to revive a durable comic property. Sadly, Freakier Friday isn’t nearly as successful. Directed by Nisha Ganatra, it’s a sequel to the superb 2003 Freaky Friday, itself a remake of the 1976 comedy of the same title.

In the 2003 film, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan played Tess and Anna Coleman, a therapist and her teenage daughter who magically swapped bodies and learned to love each other better as a result. Both actors return in Freakier Friday.

While Curtis’ Tess is still enjoying life as a therapist turned part-time podcaster, Lohan’s Anna is a music manager and a single mom with a strong-willed teenage daughter of her own. That’s Harper, nicely played by Julia Butters. Their family is about to get bigger: Anna is engaged to a dashing Brit named Eric, who has a teenage daughter, Lily — that’s Sophia Hammons — whom Harper can’t stand.

It’s an awfully convoluted setup, and that extends to the supernatural shenanigans: For reasons too tortured to explain, Anna ends up trading places with her daughter Harper, while Tess swaps bodies with her future step-granddaughter, Lily. The result is a lot of screaming chaos, as when the four leads look in the mirror and marvel at and recoil from their transformations.

The brilliance of Freaky Friday lay in its two perfectly balanced leads: Lohan, then in her teens, made a terrifically bossy mom type, while Curtis, reverting to her teens, gave one of the best, most inventive performances of her career.

The second time isn’t the charm in Freakier Friday. Far from doubling the fun, having four out-of-body experiences rather than two simply muddles the comic impact.

But the second time isn’t the charm in Freakier Friday. Far from doubling the fun, having four out-of-body experiences rather than two simply muddles the comic impact. Curtis, in particular, seems stuck in the one-note, over-the-top mode of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the ageist jokes made at her expense get tiresome pretty fast.

Lohan, though, is another story. It’s poignant to see her return to Freaky Friday, one of the films that made her a young star before years of personal struggles sidelined her career. She’s lost none of her sharp-witted presence or comic timing, but there’s something else at work here, too: Because she’s now playing a teenager trapped in a 39-year-old body, she gets to both submit to — and cheat — the passage of time. Lohan is wonderful to watch, even if you can’t always say the same about the movie she’s in.