There are only two questions to consider while watching director Akiva Schaffer’s reboot ofThe Naked Gun. First, is Liam Neeson, playing the son of bumbling L.A. detective Frank Drebin, as funny as the late Leslie Nielsen was in the original trilogy? Second, is the film making us laugh? To answer those questions, Neeson is good enough, and the film makes us laugh…a lot.
With his name recognition, action movie credentials and humorless persona (savethis classic bitfrom Ricky Gervais’Life’s Too Short) Neeson seems to be the perfect choice to step into Nielsen’s clown shoes. On screen, he’s a little less than perfect: His gruff line readings often slip into parody, working against a style of humor that’s best when the actor doesn’t know they’re in a comedy. But he’ll do anything for a laugh, even if he lacks Nielsen’s charming air of deadpan befuddlement.
The biggest compliment one can give Schaffer, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand’s script is that many of the jokes would fit perfectly in any of the three previousNaked Gunfilms, as well as their hilarious and short-lived TV predecessor, 1982’sPolice Squad!There’s a prodigious amount of inspired stupidity in its scant 85 minutes (which smartly matches the runtimes of the other films), including a couple of gut-bustingly funny extended gags. It’s enough to proclaimThe Naked Gunone of the funniest films of 2025 so far, although it must be noted that Schaffer’s version lacks the sense of anarchy and sheer number of random visual gags in the previous films. The original team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (collectively known as ZAZ) packed these with so much humor that first you’d sit up in your seat in anticipation of an incoming joke, then you’d laugh when the joke arrived, then you’d chuckle at a smaller gag that came in from the side. Schaffer’s film is too high gloss for that level of insanity. But it’s still a very funny collection of on-target jokes that honors and updates the style of the ZAZ originals.
The Naked Gun
Old-Fashioned Comedy For a Modern Audience
It’s a minor miracle the film works as well as it does. The fear going into aNaked Gunreboot is that comedy today trends so heavily towards the surreal and the satirical that pure, unabashed silliness would feel woefully out of touch. Thankfully, Schaffer — co-creator of iconicSaturday Night Liveshorts likeDick in a Boxwith hisLonely Islandco-conspirators Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone — understands whyPolice Squad!andThe Naked Gunwork. That means being unafraid of good old-fashioned slapstick and groan-inducing wordplay. (“UCLA?” Frank asks. “I see it every day. I live here.")
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Here, Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping)crafts a story that’s only meant to be sturdy enough to support a warehouse full of gags and throwaway jokes. The festivities kick off when Frank Jr. and his partner, Ed Hocken Jr. (an underused Paul Walter Hauser, playing the son of George Kennedy’s sidekick character from the original trilogy), arrive at the scene of a fatal car crash just in time to see the mangled wreck hoisted away by an oversized grabber from an arcade claw machine. Back at Police Squad headquarters — where the Cold Case room is downright freezing — Frank is visited by Beth, the dead man’s sister. Beth is played by a terrific Pam Anderson, in what is basically the Priscilla Presley role from the 1988-1994 run ofNaked Gunfilms. Beth has a hunch that her brother was murdered, and his death is connected to his work at Edentech, a microprocessor empire run by Richard Cane (Danny Huston), whose syllabic proximity to the name Elon Musk is no coincidence.
The Jokes Come at a Machine-Gun Pace
The humor is broad, absurd and unafraid of uncomfortable topics. A reference to wine from “Bill Cosby’s private estate” and a brilliant verbal joust at the expense of racist cops reminds us that the best humor is often the most dangerous. There’s even a dig at O.J. Simpson, whose character from the previous films is dismissed with a quick and rather pointed head shake. Schaffer, though, mostly sticks to humor of the juvenile kind, and he carries on ZAZ’s rich tradition of scoring big laughs from ideas that have nothing to do with the story. A sidesplitting highlight comes during a weekend getaway in a remote cabin that feels like the brainchild of the film’s executive producer,Family Guycreator Seth Macfarlane. Even the inevitable fart joke, a primordial topic of humor for the gleefully immature, works because it goes on forever and Neeson is so committed to it.
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Schaffer is so plugged into what made the previous films funny that it’s a shame he runs out of inspiration towards the end. In a frantic climax that doesn’t provide a particularly target-rich environment, Frank and Richard have a final showdown during a UFC match at L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, which Schaffer renames the Ponzi-Scheme.com Arena. It’s a joke of recognition seen in a quick establishing shot, a hallmark of spoof comedy. As in ZAZ classics likeAirplane!, some of the best gags here are given the least amount of emphasis. This new take onThe Naked Gunmakes us mourn the genre’s big-screen absence. It also has us begging for more.
The Naked Gun, from Paramount Pictures, opens in theaters August 1.
