This new version of The Naked Gun needs no explanation to anyone familiar with either the original trilogy of parody films from the late 80s to mid-90s, made by the filmmaking team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. A parody of hard boiled cop thrillers that follows a bumbling, idiotic officer that implausibly solves crimes while doing untold amounts of damage in the process, The Naked Gun films have been masterclasses in how to effectively deliver jokes, gags, and pratfalls like they were being fired from a gatling gun. Now handed over to director Akiva Schaffer (of The Lonely Island comedy team) and producer Seth MacFarlane, this new take on The Naked Gun takes the same approach. If it ain’t broke, don’t fit it, and if it is broke, then just go ahead and break the mold even more. It’s a lot funnier that way.
Stepping into the role of Lt. Frank Drebin this time out is Liam Neeson, playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s fabled Police Squad detective. Drebin Jr. has just caught his 1000th bad guy, but his boss (beloved character actress CCH Pounder) isn’t impressed. He’s ruffling feathers down at City Hall, and being bumped down to investigating car crashes as a result. But when Frank and his partner, Ed (Paul Walter Hauser), determine that one of their accidents is actually a homicide, they begin investigating wealthy industrialist Richard Cane (Danny Huston), a villain who has been building the Primordial Law of Toughness device, which can turn average human beings into rioting, blathering neanderthals. (Although, in one of the film’s best unspoken jokes, one wonders if anyone would notice this happening.) Along the way, Drebin is aided by the victim’s sister, Beth (Pamela Anderson), with whom he begins to fall in love.
I don’t why I just recited the plot of The Naked Gun. Force of habit, I guess. None of that matters in the slightest when it comes to this sort of rapid fire exercise in parody. What matters is if whether or not any of this is remotely funny, and thankfully The Naked Gun emerges as the year’s foremost expression of comedic lunacy. Like its predecessors, not every joke will hit with all audience members, but give Schaffer, his cast, and writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (re-teaming with the director after the delightfully batty and wildly underrated Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers) just a few milliseconds and there’s another zinger arriving.
The Naked Gun employs every trick in the comedic playbook (while inventing new ones of its own) to try and get people to laugh, and the only way to not get caught up in it is to find this kind of humour exhausting. Running gags (usually involving coffee cups and telephones), poop jokes, turns of phrases, instances of people taking everyday expressions too literally, background and foreground sight gags, puns, goofy sound effects, clever edits, social commentary, clean punchlines, bad taste humour, jokes made in bad taste just to poke fun at people who make such jokes, and even a hilariously long movie-within-a-movie that pops up at the most random time; they’re all thrown into a pot and left to boil. And like the previous films in The Naked Gun franchise, it’s packed into a sub-90 minute running time, including the credits (which, like the other films, you’ll want to sit through).
Schaffer and company have a full understanding of the assignment and assemble a perfect team for the job. Neeson is a revelation as Drebin, gleefully throwing himself into every joke and skewering the tough guy image he has cultivated for himself over the past decade of his career. His ability to prattle on about the stupidest things with the straightest of expressions is matched nicely by Anderson, whose talent for deadpan humour is discovered and unearthed here for the first time. Hauser, a versatile performer who excels at comedy, gets to play the even straighter man to Neeson’s already tightly wound Drebin, and showcases his willingness to get physical for even the most throwaway of background bits. And as the swaggering billionaire villain, Huston is perfectly cast as a blowhard who wants to make the world manly again.
I laughed my damned fool head off throughout The Naked Gun, and even when I wasn’t audibly laughing, the ear-to-ear smile never left my face. While I enjoyed the previous films, I wouldn’t say that I had nostalgic feelings about them like I did some other similarly pitched parodies. (I was more of a Spaceballs, MacGruber, and Top Secret kind of guy.) But I certainly appreciated them for their spirit and commitment to a wide variety of bits. Watching this latest take on The Naked Gun, I was reminded of how much fun these kinds of movies can be when made with care, dedication, and vision. (The number of truly horrid parodies from earlier in the decade nearly killed this genre off like a giant meteor.) Will it inspire a new wave of parodies? Who knows? But for now, The Naked Gun is a nice thing to have back.
The Naked Gun opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, August 1, 2025. And be sure to check out our interview with producer Erica Huggins!
