‘The Naked Gun’ and ‘Together’ is the summer double feature we didn’t know we needed

If you want to watch a movie double feature so insanely polar opposite from each other that it factory resets your brain, look no further than the mind-melting combination of The Naked Gun and Together.

One is a gruesome, body-horror deconstruction of toxic relationships and codependency and the other is a goofball comedy that’s so stupid you’ll find yourself caught between belly laughs and eye-rolling the entire time. Across these two movies, almost every emotion gets covered in one way or another, and by the time they’re both over, it feels like you’ve had a bit of a spiritual cleanse.

Together is heavenly for those of us missing the dark hilarity of The Substance and how it simultaneously worked as a grody horror movie and a critique of modern American culture. Together is not only a cringe-inducing thriller with two or three of the scariest shots I’ve seen in a film all year, but also a razor-sharp and hilarious metaphor for relationship anxiety and codependency that builds to such dizzying and disgusting heights as to be almost unbearable.

All I’ll say about the plot is this: Tim and Millie (played by real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, both never better) are a long-term couple, still unmarried, who move upstate and out of the city so she can take a teaching job. After settling down in their house in the woods, they go for a hike and fall into a mysterious cave that causes them to become much closer than they have ever been before.

Go in as blind as you can, as I did, so you can be constantly shocked and blown away by the insanely violent and depraved shenanigans that ensue. While Together might not be an instant horror classic like The Substance, it is easily the next big cult horror classic and the perfect date night movie for couples who feel a little something is missing from their relationship.

My brain was a little broken and disturbed after Together, so going directly into The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, is probably what it needed to bounce back to normal. The number of puns in this movie are legendary and when people say “they don’t make them like this anymore,” they’re talking about comedies that are so ridiculous and gleefully stupid that they’re ultimately impossible to write about.

Everyone’s sense of humor is so subjective that each person who watches Liam Neeson growl his way through 90 minutes of poop jokes, puns, prat falls, sight gags, and word play will find completely different bits to love. There’s a five-minute section of the film wherethrough a musical montage, Neeson and Anderson go on vacation together and accidentally bring a snowman to life. It had me laughing so hard I might have developed a snot bubble. Yet, I’m pretty sure I was the only person laughing in the sold-out theater. And there were sections that had the entire auditorium rolling that elicited only a groan from me, so your mileage may vary.

I grew up watching the original Naked Gun movies with my grandpa Bud, so seeing a new movie set in this cartoonishly ridiculous world hit all the nostalgia buttons for me and kept a grin on my face even when my eyes rolled toward my cranium. Some people will think this is the funniest movie they’ve ever seen, while others will think it’s the dumbest movie ever made and a death-knell for the intelligence of America. Neither is correct.

Still, I want to thank director and co-writer Akiva Schaffer for making the movie anyway. He’s one of the minds behind The Lonely Island, Hot Rod, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and has had a hand in giving me some huge laughs across the last 20 years. A whole new generation will watch this new Naked Gun with someone they love and have nothing but good memories of profound ridiculousness and the sharing of belly laughs.

In a time where everything feels so fraught and serious, there’s something beautifully cathartic about a film so purposefully stupid and hilarious that you can shut your brain off with no negative consequences. It’s so important to have an outlet like that and art is one of the last places where we can let go of our ego and just exist in someone else’s experience for a few hours. We all need it from time to time.

Together
Grade: B+

The Naked Gun
Grade: B