The Naked Gun

More than most genres, comedies are subjective. When people laugh, it’s a reflex. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld often try to intellectualize or break down what constitutes a good joke. What’s more, a whole stand-up-savvy subculture has emerged in recent years, creating a sense among fans that they know the craft of being funny. However, everyone has a different sense of humor, and there’s no way to appeal to everyone. Take The Naked Gun, a new legacy sequel that is less about a story than a gauntlet of hilariously stupid jokes. At a preview screening, I witnessed some people laughing so hard that they were wiping away tears. Others seemed to find the whole exercise dumb and childish, looking thoroughly unamused. As for the couple I saw walking out around the midpoint, they must’ve really disliked it to abandon a free movie. My reaction consisted of a constant smile, some audible laughter, and the occasional groan from an amusing display of bad taste. But as a critic, there’s not much more to be said. A movie like this has one goal: to make its audience laugh. For the most part, it succeeded. 

Some obligatory background: The comedy team behind the earlier Naked Gun movies had a short but impactful career spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The trio, known as ZAZ, included David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams. Together, these fans of the exclamation point made Airplane! (1980), Top Secret! (1984), and masterminded ABC’s short-lived television series Police Squad! in 1982, starring Leslie Nielsen. A few years later, ZAZ turned their show into a comedy trilogy, starting with 1988’s The Naked Gun. Their brand of spoof had been popularized years earlier by Mel Brooks, beginning with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in 1974, and ending with Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), which also starred Nielsen. The Wayans brothers carried that baton forward with I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) and the Scary Movie franchise. This strain of parody comedy, steeped in references and poking fun at other movies, petered out in the early 2000s after Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and countless imitators. 

It’s refreshing to see this kind of silliness with an audience again. For about a decade now, Hollywood has relegated most comedies to streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video, or Roku (see 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story), and studios have almost completely abandoned this brand of absurdist spoof humor in large-format releases. Paramount Pictures, desperate to revive the intellectual property to exploit its brand recognition, gave the franchise to director Akiva Schaffer, who’s made some comedies I’ve enjoyed (Hot Rod, 2007) and some I haven’t (The Watch, 2012). There’s not much to say about Schaffer’s work in aesthetic terms, other than The Naked Gun is bright and nimble. Its form is not distinct, except that it serves to convey a joke machine, delivering a rat-tat-tat structure that’s almost too fast—you barely have time to finish laughing before the next joke arrives. I know that I missed some gags because I couldn’t hear over the cackling around me. 

Much like its aesthetics, the story hardly matters next to the jokes, but I’ll give you a taste anyway: Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin, Jr., son of Nielsen’s character from the earlier trilogy, and he’s just as inept. A rugged cop, Drebin investigates a recent death that appears to be a suicide, but the victim’s sister, Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), thinks otherwise. She’s convinced billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston), the Musk-esque founder of Edentech, is behind it. Sure enough, Cane has a devilish plan to wipe out most of humanity while he and his ultra-rich friends wait out the chaos in an underground bunker (with live entertainment provided by “Weird” Al Yankovic). Along with his friend and colleague, Ed Hocken, Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), the son of the human-punching-bag character portrayed by George Kennedy in the originals, Drebin tries to expose Cane while also falling for Davenport. 

Neeson’s casting is an effective deadpan spin on his action-guy screen persona, which was established with Taken (2008). Some may know that Nielsen wasn’t a comedian until the ZAZ group began casting him in their comedies, at first playing the straight man who never leans into the joke. Later, Nielsen started leaning, usually to fart. Neeson farts a lot here, too, including one sequence where he woofs down multiple chili dogs in an act of gastrointestinal self-sabotage. Anderson also proves quite funny, though the former Baywatch star isn’t known for comedy, except for her part in Borat (2006). In one scene, she gives an improvisational scat jazz performance that shows her willingness to look silly, and best of all, she’s clearly having fun with it. Similar to Neeson, Huston plays it straight, and his best lines are rooted in ironies. At one point, Cane receives a gut-punch; his reaction is a riotous display of reality colliding with privilege. Elsewhere, the filmmakers could have used Hauser more. 

When reviewing a comedy, it’s tempting to explain jokes and why I thought they were funny. But that won’t get us anywhere, and it would also do your enjoyment of the movie a disservice by spoiling the best parts. However, I will tell you that its humor comes in multiple styles. The Naked Gun offers slapstick, potty humor, sight gags (some obvious, others hidden in the background), topical references, sex jokes, cop jokes, possessed snowman jokes, ludicrous moments, and comic tangents. Many of these bits work; others fall flat. Even with a short runtime of 85 minutes, the movie started to feel long. The story only takes about 75 minutes of screentime before ending with a whimper, leaving a worthwhile 10-minute credit sequence layered with jokes to fill out the runtime. While I’m not overly enthusiastic about spoof comedies, I had fun watching The Naked Gun. Even if it didn’t have much of an impact afterward, the movie made me laugh and didn’t take up too much of my evening. It would feel wrong not to recommend it.