INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film The Naked Gun. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
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PLOT
Via Letterboxd: Only one man has the particular set of skills…to lead Police Squad and save the world, Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.
REVIEW
The late, great Leslie Nielsen will be remembered for many roles, but arguably none more iconic than his turn as Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun film series. For what it’s worth, while 1992’s Aladdin is the first movie I can actually REMEMBER seeing in theaters, my parents swear they took me and my brother, both toddlers at the time, to see The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear when it came out in 1991. Now, I won’t pretend I’m some Naked Gun superfan. I’ve seen the movies, mostly during those TV reruns back when one watched films on cable TV for the first time, but I’ve never felt much urgency to revisit them. Like Happy Gilmore and other comedies from that era, their “lean into abject stupidity” style can be hit-or-miss for me.
That said, I never would’ve guessed I’d find myself in a movie theater in the year 2025 watching a new Naked Gun film. But here we are, Hollywood’s deep into its legacy reboots, remakes, sequels, and “requels” era, and we’ve now got a modern follow-up simply titled The Naked Gun. This time, the torch is passed to none other than Liam Neeson, playing the son of Frank Drebin, who has followed in his father’s footsteps to be on the force.
Coming off the disappointment of Happy Gilmore 2 just last weekend, and with trailers for this one not doing much to excite me, I went in with some slight trepidation, even after the glowing early reviews from my fellow critics. And yet, within the first five minutes, the film had me genuinely laughing out loud with a sharp self-referential gag about MacGuffins in action movies. From that point on, it rarely let up, delivering a steady, rapid-fire pace of jokes, and surprisingly, most of them landed for me.
Neeson is actually great here. He doesn’t try to mimic Nielsen but instead brings his own deadpan energy to the absurdity, and it works. He’s backed by a surprisingly strong supporting cast; Pamela Anderson plays his love interest Beth, and yes, you can see the real-life chemistry between her and Neeson shine through. Paul Walter Hauser is perfect as the straight man, a fellow officer and the son of a legacy character from the original series. CCH Pounder holds it down as the station captain, while Kevin Durand and Danny Huston chew the scenery as a pair of delightfully over-the-top villains.
Clocking in at just under 80 minutes (not including the post-credits), the film is incredibly tight but packed to the brim with gags. Somehow it squeezes in bits about awkward bodycam footage, cops lugging absurd amounts of coffee, weekend getaways, voyeurism, Spirit Halloween, Mission: Impossible, and even a plotline involving magical living killer snowmen. It’s relentless in its pursuit of laughs, and it succeeds far more often than not.
Not every joke worked for me, of course. But considering I went in expecting a low-effort comedy heavy on bodily function humor (as some of the marketing hinted at), I was pleasantly surprised by how much I actually laughed. Unlike a lot of recent comedies that play in the same sandbox, this one made it easy to lean into the nonsense and just buy into the absurdity of the world it was presenting me with.
If you’re looking for an hour and change of goofy, well-paced escapism, the kind of thing best enjoyed with a large popcorn and a large soda, The Naked Gun delivers. After just one viewing, I’d go so far as to say it might be the best film in the series. I give it a solid B+ as what will wind up one of the funniest films of the year.
GRADING