The Naked Gun

Another worthy and daring attempt at reviving the spoof

Spoof movies and satires had an impressive run of both financial and cultural success from Airplane! (1980), to Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), or Spaceballs (1987) to Mike Meyers and his Austin Powers films. Yet the 2000s changed up the formula with more vulgar and lewd films that relied less on wittiness than aiming for the lowest common denominator. The Scary Movies began a trend that devolved into Epic Movie (2007) and Superhero Movie (2008), where spoofs became relegated to direct-to-DVD fodder. There’s been attempts to bring the spoof back, most notably from the Saturday Night Live (1975-) alums Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaeffer, and Norma Tacone, more commonly known as The Lonely Island. Their pop-star mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) perfectly captured the silliness and dream logic of earlier spoof films, yet was a box office dud. Now, Schaeffer gives it another shot by making another entry in a gold-standard spoof franchise with The Naked Gun (2025).

Our protagonist in this iteration of The Naked Gun is franchise protagonist Frank Derbin’s (the late Leslie Nielsen) illegitimate child Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), who is also an Los Angeles PD detective. Frank Jr becomes embroiled in the investigation of a series of crimes that seem to connect to tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston). Along the way he tangled with the persistent Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) who is seeking answers for her brother’s supposed suicide.

This Naked Gun is not a nostalgic trip as much as it is a balanced recapturing of a comedic structure. The Naked Gun brings back the no-holds-barred and unrelenting rapid-fire humor. The flood of three jokes a minute doesn’t permit viewers to have breaks from a gag, meaning your smile never fully fades during the runtime. Yet the jokes are updated to today’s humor, but are not afraid of pushing the limits of what viewers might find acceptable. The film shines brightest in the jokes it brings to the edge, delivering laughs as well as a rush as you glance around the theater wondering if you should have laughed at it. The Naked Gun keeps the comedic structure of its 1980s and 90s predecessors, using witticisms, literal gags, and simple visual humor, while also bringing pointed commentary in a similar vein to The Lonely Island’s spoof songs. Much of their spoof lyrics were silly and hectic, yet also featured an underlying commentary on insecure masculinity. In The Naked Gun this is done in a similar way, with a subtext commentary on US policing culture.

Neeson is a surprising, if welcome casting in this purely comedic role. He’d done some comedy in cameos or skits before, but never led a full-blown studio comedy. Hopefully he’ll leave behind his action hero days, that have been growing ever staler, with finite variations on Taken (2008). In The Naked Gun, Neeson shines not so much for a chameleonic transformation, but rather in a subtle adjustment of his acting style. His Frank Drebin Jr. is played completely straight and serious, making his increasingly ridiculous situations all the more funny in their contrast. It is a brilliant calibration with only the slightest wink that makes him commandeer the film. In the supporting cast, Paul Walter Hauser as his detective partner is winning if scant, and Huston plays a cliched villain role he’s always typecast in. But it is Anderson, continuing a well-deserved career renaissance as the femme fatale of the film, who nearly steals the show. Hers is not a throwaway and objectifying role, as has sadly been the case with female characters in spoof films, but she’s rather another active character, in on the joke, and given great punchlines to deliver. This film and her phenomenal and criminally Oscar snubbed performance in The Last Showgirl (2024) are finally giving the American actress a platform to showcase a talent, long buried by tabloids and objectifying fodder.

In the end, this The Naked Gun entry is a relentless barrage of jokes and gags that even if one joke goes over your head or is unfunny, you soon have two more lined up. The humor is silly, yet witty, and while the film doesn’t reinvent comedy or push it anywhere new, it is a worthy attempt to rescue an unfairly maligned sub-genre, bringing back a style and daring that’s been sorely missing in contemporary comedies.

8.0/10