In the bank heist that opens Akiva Schaffer’s reboot/sequel of “The Naked Gun,” the villain blasts open a safety deposit box to retrieve his target, an item labeled “P.L.O.T. Device.” It’s this simple: If you find that sight gag funny, “The Naked Gun” will probably work for you. If not, see something else this weekend.
The “Saturday Night Live” gang known as Lonely Island—Jorma Taccone, Andy Samberg, and Schaffer—have always had a sense of humor that felt inspired by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker, the geniuses behind comedy classics like “Airplane!” and the 1988 film that turned a little-seen canceled TV show called “Police Squad!” into a theatrical franchise. If you can’t see the connection between a “Lonely Island” creation like MacGruber and Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin, you’re not paying attention. And that sense that this is more of a natural passing of the torch than a cash grab nostalgia reboot buoys everything about the 2025 “The Naked Gun,” a movie that doesn’t get weighed down by references to the original. Perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay the film is that I’m almost positive that everyone involved in the original, Nielsen included, would find enough to laugh at here. And, man, seeing a film with no intent other than to produce laughter in a crowded theater in 2025 feels like seeing a black swan in the current state of the genre, when almost all comedies, even big ones like “Happy Gilmore 2,” are designed to be watched at home. Remember when people paid to laugh in unison at a big screen? Yeah, I barely do too.
As with the original, casting goes a long way here, as Liam Neeson deftly segues from the action roles that redefined his screen persona since “Taken,” using that tough-guy character to poke fun at on-screen cops. Frank Drebin Jr. is even more of a cop on the edge than his dad, flouting the rules to catch the bad guys. As he wonders aloud, who’s going to arrest him anyway? A cop?!?! Cops don’t arrest cops.
He fends off accusations of impropriety from Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) as he investigates two intertwined cases with his pal, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser). There’s the aforementioned bank robbery led by the slimy Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand) and an apparent suicide that leads the film’s possible femme fatale into his office, the dead man’s sister, Beth Davenport (a well-cast Pamela Anderson). She’s convinced that a tech bro named Richard Cane (Danny Huston) is behind all of it, and we soon learn that he’s planning to unleash his variation on the “Manchurian Candidate” device that drove the action of the 1988 film, a signal that will make everyone’s phones turn them into angry lunatics. This might be based on a true story.
Writers Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Schaffer smartly avoid the biggest trap of spoofs that tried and failed to be Z-A-Z by largely avoiding pop culture references that would instantly date the film, sticking with wordplay and sight gags that owe a debt to everything from Vaudeville to silent comedy. And the bits that do reference entertainment properties like The Black Eyed Peas and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” aren’t exactly trying to ride a wave of “current” viral humor. Overall, there’s a timeless quality to the best jokes in “The Naked Gun” that makes them feel of a piece with the lines in the original without being direct copies. They don’t all work, but there are so many of them packed into this film’s blissfully short runtime (under 85 minutes) that every one that lands with a thud is followed by one that connects.
The comedic batting average may not be as high as when Enrico Pallazzo saved the Queen (or even my favorite Lonely Island movie, the hysterical “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping“). Still, this movie has a secret weapon that makes it into a comedy killing machine: Liam Neeson. The main reason that “The Naked Gun” is consistently smile-inducing is because of how wonderfully Neeson’s deadpan gravitas works with the material—a performer who can be so deadly serious doing things that are so deadly stupid. Anderson, Hauser, and Huston are all good enough, but this is the Liam Neeson Show, the Oscar nominee fearlessly throwing himself into Drebin with even more self-serious ridiculousness than his predecessor. Whether he’s shooting his way into a bathroom after too many chili dogs or beating a man with his own arms, Neeson takes what’s happening as seriously as if he’s in a “Taken” sequel, never winking at the camera like lesser actors would with the same material. As insane as this sounds, it’s legitimately one of his best performances because he never plays it like he’s above the ridiculousness of it all, threading that needle of self-parody and playing the moment as genuinely as he possibly can.
There’s a funny bit late where another famous actor takes his place, an actor I like, and I had a vision of what “The Naked Gun” could have been with that comedy-action star, or anyone else really, in Neeson’s part for the entire flick. It would have been a comedy crime.
