The Naked Gun Review – A Hilarious Comeback for Classic Comedy

The Naked Gun Review – A Hilarious Comeback for Classic Comedy

A review by Marc Primo

Authenticity has always been the secret ingredient. That's what made Leslie Nielsen's brilliance so unforgettable — a serious actor playing it utterly straight in the midst of chaos. His deadpan delivery turned Airplane! and 1988's The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! into comedic masterpieces, where his sincerity made every absurd moment land perfectly.

Akiva Schaffer's new take on The Naked Gun carries that legacy forward with surprising finesse. This time, Liam Neeson steps into the role of Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. — a loving nod to his on-screen father ("Love you, Dad"). From the very first scene, a clever spoof of Mission Impossible-style antics, Neeson proves himself more than capable. He brings a stone-faced charm to a film that thrives on sheer ridiculousness.

It's 85 minutes of unabashedly goofy fun, and Neeson, playing it straight as ever, keeps the chaos grounded — just as Nielsen once did.

In a time when true laugh-out-loud comedies have nearly vanished from cinemas, calling Akiva Schaffer's The Naked Gun the funniest film of the decade might sound like faint praise. Yet the title fits — and not just because the competition is scarce. Schaffer, along with co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, delivers a script that fires off jokes at a relentless pace: a gleeful mix of puns, slapstick, and blink-and-you'll-miss-it background humor.

If one gag falls flat, another lands before there's time to notice. That rhythm is no easy feat. Comedy, after all, thrives on momentum — and nothing stifles laughter faster than waiting for a punchline that never comes. Schaffer's film never loses its footing; it keeps the energy high without ever feeling forced, proving just how delicate the balance of great comedy really is.

Spoofs have never been known for airtight storytelling, and The Naked Gun is no exception. The plot stumbles along with cheerful disregard for logic, serving more as a loose frame than a narrative. It's less a story than a stage — or perhaps a coat hanger — from which an endless string of gags can dangle. Jokes about "Primordial Law of Toughness" gadgets and absurd inner monologues pile up with gleeful abandon.

Liam Neeson's Frank Drebin Jr. bears the heavy shadow of his father's legend, yet still carves out a space of his own in this rebooted Police Squad world. He's the kind of officer who believes he's above the law — though, in practice, he's anything but. Overseeing his chaos is the ever-commanding CCH Pounder as Chief Davis, while Danny Huston's Richard Cane oozes suspicion with every slick grin.

Assigned to solve the bizarre death of a man crushed beneath an overturned electric car, Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. naturally takes the least professional route possible — by falling for the victim's alluring sister. Enter Beth, a self-styled true-crime author with a flair for dramatics, played with lively charm by Pamela Anderson. She keeps pace effortlessly with Neeson's bumbling detective, whose inner monologues swing between poetic confusion and comic catastrophe. Lines like "she had a body that carried her head around" or "a bottom that would make any toilet beg for the brown" land with such straight-faced absurdity that they become irresistible. It's crass, it's clever, and it's classic Naked Gun: deadpan and dead funny.

Like any revival of a beloved classic, Akiva Schaffer's The Naked Gun walks a careful line between homage and reinvention. He threads the film with callbacks to the original's most iconic moments — from a gloriously absurd Wham-inspired montage featuring Drebin Jr. and Beth, to the return of the infamous car-crash chaos, now upgraded with flying coffee cups for good measure.

Fresh ideas aren't the film's strongest currency, but its execution more than makes up for it. The gags, whether familiar or recycled, still hit with precision. A pun about UCLA ("all the time — I live here") or the age-old "take a chair" routine might not be groundbreaking, yet the delivery keeps them razor-sharp. Even a simple shadow-play sequence, clearly paying tribute to the past, lands with laugh-out-loud perfection.

In keeping with its old-school spirit, Schaffer's The Naked Gun does not attempt to drag itself into the modern age. There's a faint echo of Taken in its bursts of grounded action — though even that reference feels charmingly dated now — but the film's heart beats firmly in the rhythm of the 1980s. It's not just that Hollywood doesn't make comedies like this anymore; it no longer even makes the kind of movies this one lovingly parodies. Free from the weight of pop culture nods or self-aware commentary, this reboot proudly embraces its throwback identity — a relic by design, and all the better for it.