Growing up, I loved the original “Naked Gun” trilogy. As a 9-year-old by the time, say, “The Naked Gun 2 1/2” opened in theaters, I surely didn’t catch every parodic barb or reference—my internal inventory of mostly R-rated cop movies from which the franchise took inspiration was limited. But the jokes delivered at a ratatat pace that, in retrospect, seems to appeal directly to an adolescent brain.
Today, we might call it a TikTok-trained brain. Each bit was short, fast and to the point, with no time to linger on a comedic achievement, and no gag milked beyond its immediate utility. Compared with the spoofs of Mel Brooks, which approached their subjects with a deliberate cinematic grandeur that was all but indistinguishable from their dramatic influences, “The Naked Gun”’s original production team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker created manna for the impatient.
The series’ new theatrical reboot, despite having shed the participation of the Zucker Brothers, feels like both an homage to and an update on their inspired work—a retread of the ground they tilled, but a loving one, with a studied deadpan tone that feels just right.
Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., son of the late Leslie Neilson’s O.G. “Naked Gun” protagonist, who has followed in his father’s footsteps as a detective in Police Squad, the LAPD’s most elite and mercenary unit. A bank robbery opens the film with cheeky irreverence for the countless cop thrillers that have come before it. As masked gunman create havoc in the lobby, a henchman opens a safe deposit box in a vault to reveal a gadget literally emblazoned with the words “P.L.O.T. Device.”
Drebin takes the case, which involves an engineer discovered in an apparent suicide, a malevolent tech billionaire played by Danny Huston, and a femme fatale, love interest and author—“of true crime novels based on my fictional stories”—portrayed by Pamela Anderson. But the plot, as it should be, is a mere skeleton on which director Akiva Schaffer hangs gag after gag: voice-over gags, foley-effects gags, fourth-wall-breaking meta gags, paraprosdokians, clever call-backs and bonkers narrative detours like a romantic montage involving witchcraft and an animated snowman. There are even Easter egg gags hidden in the end credits.
Schaffer, whose 2016 “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” is among the most underrated comedies of the aughts, finds creative opportunities everywhere, from the obvious to the nuanced. The result is a film that, like its predecessors, rewards our constant attention—our ability to focus at once on foreground and background, on dialogue and décor. If I looked at my notebook to jot something down, I surely missed another joke. And most of them work: I’d estimate the overall laugh rate at 80%.
Temporally, this “Naked Gun” feels divided between the ‘80s-‘90s milieu of the original trilogy and the anxieties and cultural trends of our zeitgeist. Representing the latter, we get characters like Huston’s Richard Cane, a generic stand-in for the Musk-Bezos-Zuckerberg class of billionaire sociopath—a durable if easy target who never uses the word “woke” but who favors red-light therapy on his testicles, and who owns a lounge where men can be men, and where visitors can still use a certain slur for disabled people and not be canceled. This appeals to Drebin as much as to Cane, as he faces a cultural environment in which Police Squad officers now must wear body cams and can no longer abuse their authority with impunity.
But the fun “The Naked Gun” pokes at the manosphere is gentle, not biting; as the director of a mainstream comedy, Shaffer knows better than to potentially alienate half of his audience. What sticks in the mind more prominently are the graphic novel-like set designs for the film, which—whether it’s the capacious, gilded bank; the densely cluttered police station; or Cane’s blue-hued cigar-and-jazz bar—evoke the imagined places of classic noir movies, not real life.
Almost everything about the movie suggests a calculated escape from the real world, which feels necessary in this high-stress time. It may tinker with themes relevant to 2025, but its safe place is a comfortable cocoon of self-aware nostalgia.
The Naked Gun is playing now at theaters including Cinemark Bistro, IPIC Theaters and VIP Shadowood 16 in Boca Raton.
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