The Naked Gun

The Naked Gun, 2025, 1 ½ stars

The Naked Gun  misfires

Neeson no Nielsen, Schaffer no Zucker

Exclusive to MeierMovies, October 3, 2025

As Monty Python taught us, there is a knack to walking silly. And if you don’t have the moves, your silly will soon stroll stupid.

And so it goes for The Naked Gun, the reboot of that beloved spoof franchise from the ‘80s and early ‘90s. The new film is set in the present, and the original policemen (Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin and George Kennedy’s Ed Hocken) are long gone. So this movie follows the shenanigans of their sons, Frank Jr. (Liam Neeson) and Ed Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), plus new characters such as a femme fatale (Pamela Anderson) and a villain (Danny Huston), who – in a plot that is over-the-top even for a Naked Gun flick – has designs on essentially destroying the world.

David and Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams, created the original Police Squad! TV show and the subsequent films, imbuing them with the appropriate sensibility. Though they clearly cherish the franchise and fill their new movie with cinematic nostalgia, writer-director Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod, The Watch) and fellow writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand are often left grasping for something they can’t quite capture. Despite some fun moments and sporadic chuckles, the new Naked is too frequently exposed for what it really is: a cheap knock-off.

The elephant in this review is the fact that Anderson and Neeson (Schindler’s List notwithstanding) have simply never been very good actors. And despite their apparent real-life chemistry, they seem miscast, stretching or squeezing themselves to fill the gumshoes of Nielsen and the original films’ bombshell, Priscilla Presley, who, thanks to their cinematic alchemy and a pitch-perfect, noir-style script, made the original 1988 film memorable. Smell of Fear, from 1991, didn’t have quite the same scent but was still good fun. Only with 1994’s Final Insult did the series wear out its welcome.

Regrettably, Neeson and Anderson’s welcome is exhausted from the get-go, as Schaffer opts mostly for action instead of the original series’ trademark droll goofiness and old-fashioned slapstick. Admittedly, there are some fun sight gags, and a great joke referencing O.J. Simpson, who played Detective Nordberg in the originals. One hates to use the word “subtle” to describe those earlier films, but they did contain an understated quality that has gotten lost in the reboot. Despite the plethora of dad jokes, this isn’t your father’s Naked Gun.

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For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. The film opened in cinemas on August 1 and is now streaming on Paramount+.