Priscilla Presley

The Naked Gun

01/08/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Yes, I know, it’s Fringe 2025 and I appreciate that in August that generally takes precedence over movies – but damn it, this is the reboot of The Naked Gun, which I’ve been eagerly awaiting since they released the trailer several months ago. 

For those of you who weren’t around for the original way back in 1988, some back story may be appropriate.

Inspired by the TV series, Police Squad, The Naked Gun starred Leslie Neilsen as Detective Frank Drebin, a useless cop with a predilection for landing himself in the worst kind of trouble possible.The first film, directed by David Zucker (who also gave the world Airplane!), was a palpable hit and two decent sequels followed (in 1991 and 1994 respectively). The films also gave Neilsen’s co-star Priscilla Presley an opportunity to shine – and sharp-eyed viewers may spot her in a brief cameo here. The trilogy were outrageous spoofs of the hardboiled detective genre and Nielsen’s approach was to act the central role with the kind of gravitas an actor might apply to Hamlet, completely oblivious to the madness exploding all around him. It was an approach that created comedy gold.

This reboot, directed by Akiva Schaffer, centres around Drebin’s son (played by Liam Neeson, who seems an intelligent choice for the part). He’s clearly a chip off the old block, though – unlike his dad -Frank Junior has the combative skills of a Ninja warrior, as is proved in the opening scene in which, initially disguised as a schoolgirl, he single-handedly takes on a gang of vicious bank robbers and beats the crap out of them. (This isn’t a spoiler: anyone who has seen the trailer will know this, as it pretty much shows the entire sequence.)

For the most part, Neeson adopts his predecessor’s approach, ignoring the general chaos and his own stupidity in his single-minded approach to getting the job done by any means possible. Presley’s role is taken by Pamela Anderson, as novelist Beth Davenport, a woman with her own personal axe to grind. (Anderson actually auditioned for the original film back in the day so it’s nice to see her finally getting to grips with the part.) Paul Walter Hauser plays Frank Jnr’s sidekick, Ed Hocken Jnr.

Their adversary this time out is the oleaginous Richard Cane (Danny Huston), a tech-billionaire who has built his massive fortune on a range of electric automobiles – hmm, I wonder where they got that idea from? It’s revealed early on that Cane has come up with an evil – and quite frankly loopy –  plan to achieve world domination….

The plot is, as you might expect, utter nonsense, a thinly-veiled excuse to link together a seemingly endless stream of slapstick routines and dumb one-liners, which is pretty much the object of the exercise. Okay, so if I’m being scrupulously honest, The Naked Gun 2025 rarely rises to the inspired heights of its progenitor, but much of that might be that the world has changed irrevocably since the 1980s and the audience’s appetite for this kind of rampant stupidity has inevitably waned. There are attempts here to incorporate new elements into the proceedings – a fantasy sequence set during a skiing weekend and featuring a magical snowman seems to have wandered in  from a different genre entirely, but it still manages to make me laugh.

Neeson and Anderson provide the heart of this film and, if recent rumours are to be believed – that the pair of them genuinely have become a couple – well, that’s nice to hear. Whether this film can make a big enough dent on the box office to justify a sequel remains to be seen. But, overall, I enjoy it and I suspect there are plenty of others out there who will feel the same.

Oh, and those of you who are prepared to sit through the lengthy credits till the very end will be rewarded with… ah no, you’ll have to see for yourselves.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Priscilla

22/12/23

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

Priscilla

If Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis was a dazzling celebration of the singer’s career, Priscilla offers the polar opposite of that film – a true story with a dark underbelly that, viewed with the gift of hindsight, feels almost shockingly transparent. Presley emerges as a toxic human being, a man who manipulated and exploited a naive fourteen year old girl for his own purposes. 

And before you say, “Well that’s just director Sofia Coppola’s interpretation of what happened,” let me add that her screenplay is closely based on Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, Elvis and Me – and that she was one of the executive producers on the film.

We first meet her as a bored teenager on an Army base in Germany. Cailee Spaaeny submits an impressive performance in the title role, managing to convincingly portray her subject from her early teens to her late twenties. When a young officer approaches Priscilla and casually asks her if she’d like to meet Elvis Presley, of course she says yes! Like most other kids in the late 1950s, she is a big fan. And he is arguably the most famous person on the planet.

So, to the understandable consternation of her parents, Priscilla heads off to Elvis’s house and is soon chatting to the man himself, as played by Jacob Elordi, last seen being quintessentially English in Saltburn, but managing to inhabit Presley’s mumbling, brooding persona with considerable skill. The pair hit it off, big time.

When Elvis is posted back to America, a lengthy interval suggests that he may have forgotten about her but, out of the blue (and again, much to her parent’s understandable concern), she’s summoned to his new home, Graceland, where she’s invited to become a permanent fixture. No sex yet, not until she’s of age, but plenty of smooching and much manipulation from Presley, who coaxes her to change her hair, her makeup and her fashions – to become, in effect, his dream girl.

As Presley grooms Priscilla (and there really isn’t a more appropriate term for what he’s doing), so her own identity becomes increasingly erased – and who knows where it’s all going to end?

Coppola’s accomplished film is handsomely mounted, the period detail convincingly evoked over the changing decades and it’s interesting to note how cinematographer Phillippe Le Sourd keeps everything murky and claustrophobic in the film’s early stretches, mirroring young Priscilla’s view of the world she’s obliged to exist in. Le Sourd returns to the gloom in the film’s later scenes, as Presley slips inexorably into addiction to prescription drugs. In between, the screen sizzles and pops as the odd twosome actually begin to enjoy the advantages of being a couple.

Weirdly, I knew about their story from my own childhood. My sister was a member of Presley’s fan club and received a monthly magazine. In the early sixties, I read repeatedly about the man’s developing relationship with Priscilla. Of course, back then, I wasn’t mature enough to fully appreciate how profoundly creepy the whole arrangement was. Priscilla’s age was an open secret to the world but, blinded by Presley’s fame, we just kind of accepted it. Shame on us.

This is a fascinating film, one that digs a lot deeper than Lurhman’s (admittedly very enjoyable) biopic, exposing the ugly bumps and warts that lay beneath the shimmering surface of stardom. To say that it’s an eye-opener would be something of an understatement. 

4.3 stars

Philip Caveney