MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

Sassafras Chicken in D. Make it extra lumpy, boys.

As much as I enjoy witty repartee and sophisticated but humorous observations about the human condition, there is something enormously satisfying about a comedy that is unashamedly, gleefully stupid. My favorite out-and-out comedy of this type is Airplane! from 1980, which was written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, and my second favorite comedy of all time of this type is The Naked Gun from 1988, which ZAZ co-wrote with Pat Proft. The Naked Gun was itself a spinoff of the short-lived comedy TV series Police Squad, which aired on ABC for one season in 1982, and starred Leslie Nielsen as the inept LAPD detective Lt. Frank Drebin. Over the course of the show and the three subsequent films he investigates various murders, robberies, and extortion rackets – all of which are framing devices on which to hang all manner of goofy one-liners, ridiculous sight gags, and hilarious pratfalls, all centered around Nielsen’s unique brand of comedy.

There had been tentative plans to make a fourth Naked Gun movie, which would have seen Drebin training a young rookie, but the idea was shelved in 2009, and then cancelled entirely when Nielsen passed in 2010 at the age of 84. No word on whether he had an arm like a cannon, or could have played for the Broncos or the 49ers. However, the love for The Naked Gun in Hollywood never went away, and in 2022 this new version was finally put into production by Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions, with a screenplay by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer, and with Schaffer himself directing.

The film stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., who has followed in his father’s footsteps and become an LAPD detective, and has a supporting cast that includes Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, and Danny Huston. Best of all, the film also stars Pamela Anderson as the femme fatale Beth Davenport, Frank’s love interest. Davenport – who writes true crime novels based on fictional stories that she makes up, and has the type of bottom that would make any toilet beg for the brown – is investigating the apparent murder of her brother. This brings her into contact with Drebin, who is himself investigating a bank robbery, and who discovers that the two cases are connected.

The scores for the three original Naked Gun movies were by Ira Newborn, whose brilliant jazzy spoof of classic 1950s cop show themes have since become inextricably linked with the franchise. The first composer attached to the new Naked Gun was Joel McNeely, who has worked for producer McFarlane for decades on TV shows like American Dad and The Orville, and movies like A Million Ways to Die in the West. However, just a few weeks before the film was due to be released, McNeely was unexpectedly replaced by Lorne Balfe, much to my great disappointment – not because it was Balfe who replaced him, but because selfishly I really wanted to hear McNeely’s take on this genre. Besides, like a teenager with three babysitting jobs who doesn’t need another babysitting job, Balfe and his team have already had numerous high profile scores over the last few years, including Novocaine, Hill, The Woman in the Yard, and season three of The Wheel of Time just this year alone, whereas McNeely hasn’t had a solo film credit since Tinker Bell and the Legend of the Never Beast in 2014.

However, despite my initial disappointment, I am very happy to report that Balfe’s score is great, a perfect parody of the modern Mission: Impossible action scores that he himself created. In the album’s liner notes, Balfe says that when he first sat down with the director to talk about the score, he was told one thing right away: the music had to feel honest. “That set the tone for everything that followed. No matter how absurd the scenes got, the score needed to treat them seriously – especially the action. We weren’t playing for laughs; the music had to sell the drama, because that’s what makes the comedy land.” He went on to say; “I grew up loving The Naked Gun and Police Squad – they were a big part of my childhood. Ira Newborn’s original theme is iconic, and I really wanted to honor that noir-inspired, brassy sound while bringing a fresh energy for today’s audience. That contrast – serious music underscoring ridiculous situations – is what makes this world so fun to play in.”

The opening cue, “My Name is Frank Drebin Jr.,” is actually a perfect example of this, as it sounds for all the world like a score cue from something like Inception or The Dark Knight, moving through a sequence of ominous tension before exploding into a modern action sequence. The music is actually terrific – brassy, ballsy, kinetic, underpinned with an array of interesting electronic percussion layers – and it sells the joke to a tee, treating the scene of Drebin foiling a bank robbery with the utmost seriousness and intensity, despite the fact that Drebin is dressed as a schoolgirl. In fact, I would go as far as saying that that music really *is* the joke. That’s the whole point. The scene is staged and shot like the Heath Ledger/Joker bank robbery from The Dark Knight, and Balfe parodying that music is what helps it land. The cue ends with a brief homage to Newborn’s bluesy ‘Lonely Drebin’ theme from the original movie, all muted trumpets and brushed snares; like father like son, even down to their gastrointestinal issues with hot dogs. Later cues like the second half of “Have A Nice Trip” revisit this action style with equally impressive results.

“There She Was Again” is Balfe’s sultry theme for Beth Davenport, another piece steeped in classic film noir jazz and 1940s orchestral melodrama, and which really adds a touch of old Hollywood glamor to the romance that develops between her and Frank; as Frank says, “she was put together correctly – head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,” and Balfe’s music reflects those appropriate proportions. There is more romantic jazz in the subsequent “Turkey Talk,” where Frank and Beth bond further over the potential of food borne salmonella and the fact that Beth ‘likes a sick little boy.’

There is a touch of Jerry Goldsmith’s Basic Instinct to the slithery, icy strings of cues like “Something Fowl” and “Project Inferno,” which accompany the mystery element of the film – tech billionaire Richard Cane, Edentech, and the P.L.O.T. Device. Some of this music also intentionally mirrors Balfe’s own Mission: Impossible scores, all low brooding cello textures and menacing brass motifs. It’s an astonishing piece of meta-parody, where the composer writes a score spoofing the score for the film which his film is spoofing, which he also wrote. Everyone got that? Good.

The finale of the film takes place during and after an MMA bout held at the newly-renamed Ponzi-Scheme.com Arena, and the three score cues that underscore it – “The Main Event,” “Calm People Up,” and “Two Kodiak Bears” – are mostly cut from the same cloth as the previous action music. The aggressive brass motif for Edentech/Project Inferno features strongly throughout the entire sequence, and the Dark Knight-style adrenaline-filled music reaches its full intensity as Drebin chases Richard Cane through the streets of Los Angeles while being carried by an owl sent as a ‘spirit animal’ by his father. Owls, bats, same difference. The final fight between Drebin and Cane ends abruptly when Cane is punched once, rather weakly, in the soft part of his belly, and finds that it really hurts. He’ll do more than ten years for man’s laughter in Statesville Prison, that’s for sure.

The final flourish of triumphant orchestral heroism in “Press Conference” is a wonderful throwback to Ira Newborn’s “Drebin Hero” cue from the first Naked Gun, by way of Robert Folk’s Police Academy march, and then the end credits roll with an absolutely terrific new arrangement of Newborn’s full Naked Gun theme, courtesy of Gordon Goodwin and his Big Phat Band.

The album also includes two original songs. “My Sweet Beth” is a tender love ballad sung – if you can call it that – by Neeson in character as Drebin, who is continually distracted by the tech of the recording studio. The second is “Sassafras Chicken in D,” an improvisational scat jazz masterpiece co-written by McNeely and performed in character by Anderson as Beth’s food-obsessed lounge singer alter ego Cherry Roosevelt Fat-Bozo-Chowing-Down-on-Spaghetti. Miss Spaghetti’s dooby-dooby vocals start out sounding reasonably sensible, but gradually become increasingly ridiculous as the song progresses, until she is somehow crying, babbling, and growling like a dog, all at the same time. Just as a side note, I have to say, I’m loving this re-invention of Pamela Anderson, first through her turn on Broadway in Chicago, then via her awards-caliber performance in The Last Showgirl, and now through her adorable silliness here. When you combine this with the wholesome makeup-free look she has adopted over the past few years, she seems to be finally being to the world who she always really was inside, and it’s fantastic to see. She can Belgian my waffles anytime.

With a running time of just over half an hour – 22 minutes of score, if you take out the songs and the main theme cover – Lorne Balfe’s Naked Gun is a short burst of riotous energy that comes in, quickly makes its point, and is outta there before you realize it. The action music is a brilliant parody which combines Hans Zimmer’s Inception/Dark Knight style with Balfe’s own Mission: Impossible music, the jazzy love theme is a superb throwback to the sound of 1950s film noir, and the little nods to Ira Newborn’s classic themes allow Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. to co-exist in the same musical universe. Comedy scores which ignore the laughs entirely and only comment on the drama always hit the spot, and The Naked Gun does so perfectly. Just remember: You can’t fight city hall. It’s a building. (Nice beaver).

Buy Naked Gun soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• My Name is Frank Drebin Jr. (3:05)
• There She Was Again (2:31)
• Something Fowl (2:25)
• Sassafras Chicken in D (written by Akiva Schaffer, Liz Gillies, Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Joel McNeely, performed by Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport) (2:20)
• Project Inferno (2:28)
• Turkey Talk (1:12)
• Have A Nice Trip (2:11)
• Hall of Legends (1:33)
• The Main Event (3:19)
• Calm People Up (2:02)
• Two Kodiak Bears/Press Conference (1:52)
• My Sweet Beth (written by Akiva Schaffer and Greg Chun, performed by Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr.) (2:42)
• The Naked Gun (Gordon Goodwin Remix) (3:04)

Milan Records (2025)

Running Time: 30 minutes 49 seconds

Music composed by Lorne Balfe. Conducted by Jeremy Earnest. Orchestrations by Yaron Eigenstein, Jaimee Jimin Park and Gordon Goodwin. Additional music by Peter Adams, Brandon Campbell, and Jeremy Earnest. Original Naked Gun themes by Ira Newborn. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hardisty. Edited by Peter Myles. Album produced by Lorne Balfe and Peter Myles.