Reasons To Go See The Naked Gun, Ranked

Top ten. Here we go:

TEN: It’s really funny, which seems like an obvious and kind of dumb thing to say right up front, but there was a long run of spoof-type movies over the last few decades — Scary Movie, Epic Movie, etc. — that diluted the genre so thin you could see right through it, so someone – director Akiva Shaffer, mostly, who knows his way around a silly joke or two – finally doing one of these right again is honestly a refreshing and enjoyable experience.

NINE: The jokes come in fast and from all angles, almost relentlessly, so even when you do have a clunker or two (unavoidable when operating at this kind of scale), there’s another one coming in a second that’ll make up for it.

EIGHT: Paul Walter Hauser rules.

SEVEN: Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson both spent decades getting shoehorned into a limited set of roles (Pamela, sex bombs; Liam, very serious dudes who punch sex traffickers in the throat), so it’s very cool to watch them get to do something different and flex their comedic chops at this stage of their careers.

SIX: It’s fascinating to watch the scenes where Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are on screen together and wonder if that’s the moment they fell in love, and it’s especially fascinating to wonder that when they’re, say, doing raunchy bits of physical comedy with a dog.

FIVE: The jokes are so stupid in such a good way, and after you see it, you’ll understand what I mean when I say things like: the windshield bit, the chili dog bit, the line about a character's bottom.

FOUR: There was a guy in the theater when I saw it who was just howling at every joke, and while I might have found it annoying in another movie where I cared a single lick about the plot, it ended up being charming and infectious and kind of set the tone for everyone else there to let it rip, too.

THREE: It is really just a blast to be in a room full of people who are all laughing for 90 minutes.

TWO: There’s a scene in the movie — the one with the dog I mentioned above, although that’s as close as I’ll come to spoiling it — where the jokes keep escalating and getting dirtier and dirtier and at one point a woman behind me interuppted a fit of laughter to gasp “OH NOOOOOO” and then rolled right back into the original fit of laughter, which is honestly all you can possibly ask for from a comedy like this.

ONE: You deserve a good time at the movies.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— David Roth wrote about Ichiro

— Harrison Ford interview

— Bill Burr interview

— great piece on WNBA star Napheesa Collier, who went down with an injury last week but is still the damn coolest

— Matt Gelb wrote this really interesting story about the video package for new Phillies closer Jhoan Duran, and how two teams raced and cooperated to have it ready for his first appearance, and I was going to post the video here as my one Phillies entry of the week, but then this happened last night 

— “I Drank Every Cocktail”

— everybody watched Happy Gilmore 2

— Conan O’Brien confirms that working with Adam Sandler is fun

— “There are no new superhero movies for the next six months – is Hollywood up to something?”

— related: Fantastic Four opened strong but took a huge second week diverooni

— “Baby Racer Stunts On Competitors By Standing Up And Walking”

— important photojournalism from the dog surfing competition

— important item from the upcoming Larry King auction: "1990s Enormous Wacky Portrait Made Out of Jelly Beans"

— beef heist

— Love Is Blind is casting in Philly lol

— speaking of Philly, a cheesesteak entrepreneur is suing the local newspaper because he claims a story about him led former mob boss and current fellow cheesesteak entrepreneur Joey Merlino to label him “a rat"

— I really do recommend taking the time to watch Timothy Olyphant screw with Conan for a full hour

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please share and subscribe and go laugh in a room with some strangers.