A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Naked Gun” (2025, 3*, 15).
This is the summer of highly divisive movies: “Jurassic World: Rebirth“; “Superman“; even it seems “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Bring Her Back“. “The Naked Gun” is another one to add to that list. In my circle of (ex) “Flickering Dreamers”, the Good Reverend Andy Godfrey (his book is a good read) described it as “Terrible… Didn’t laugh once”; Scott Forbes described it as “atrocious” and Emma Sewell thought it was “hilarious”. But – since comedy is a highly personal and subjective thing – it’s perhaps understandable.
My opinion? Yes, I laughed a lot. But at the same time, the comedy was much more patchy and inconsistent compared to the classic 1988 original.
Plot:
A bank heist is in progress, but all the organiser – billionaire tech-mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston) – is interested in is an electronic panel – the ‘P.L.O.T. Device’ (LOL) – within a specific safety deposit box. Detective Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) thwarts the other robbers. But then when investigating the mysterious death of engineer Simon Davenport in an electric car, Drebin is again thrown into the orbit of Cane as well as the alluring Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) on a mission of vengeance.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong sex references”.)
Talent:
Starring: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Danny Huston, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand.
Directed by: Akiva Schaffer.
Written by: Dan Gregor, Doug Mand & Akiva Schaffer. (Based on “Police Squad” by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker.)
Running Time: 1h 25m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Comedy is always subjective, but for me this had a bunch of really good belly-laughs.
- There are some delicious throwbacks to the original “Naked Gun” film.
- Liam Neeson makes for a surprisingly good deadpan comedy actor and Pamela Anderson works well as the femme fatale.
Negatives:
- The comedy is highly sporadic. Some scenes just didn’t work well.
- Some of the throwbacks to the original film just plain grate.
- The trailer is extremely spoilerific.
Full Review of “The Naked Gun”:
I’m never going to object to a proper comedy on the big screen.
I have bemoaned previously in this blog the lack of really good comedies on the big screen. Films that were pitched as a COMEDY, that actually made you weak at the knees from laughing. And, to a degree, with “The Naked Gun”, we are still waiting. For while the film had me in fits of giggles at times, during other sequences I either barely raised a smile or was left stony faced. (This is not something I could say of the 1988 original, starring the late, great Leslie Nielsen, which I can still watch on repeat and is, for me, hilarious for 90% of its running time.)
At times, I laughed my ass off.
So, what worked in this re-version for me?:
- Well, the whole pre-title sequence is very funny indeed, invoking some extremely silly Mission: Impossible mask-wearing and the absurd disarming and capture of the bank robbers;
- A sequence I found very funny was the interrogation of a barman, repeatedly having his head bashed into the bar and then narrowing down the identity of the fugitive brother that Drebin shot and killed in the past. Superb.
- “It says you served 20 years for man’s laughter. Must have been quite a joke.” LOL.
- A running gag of coffee being offered (although perhaps over-mined by a few times)
- A shadow puppetry scene aping a scene in “The Naked Gun 33 1/3” but, more famously, the ‘tent scene’ from “Austin Powers: Goldmember”. This time we have added bestiality implied (which will step right over the bounds of good taste for many)!
- A reimagining the effective scenes of travelling carnage in the original trilogy: here we have Drebin’s car colliding in turn with balloons, beekeepers and ultimately guys carrying a windscreen!;
- The ‘Nordberg’ un-tribute;
- The reoccurrence of a certain stuffed rodent;
- A brief cameo by one of the stars of the original films.
- A huge amount of background detail: this is a film that you could see a dozen times and still pick out more sight gags in the set dressing.
But, then there are the other bits.
Sadly, the comedy quality is not consistent across the piece and there are far too many scenes that failed to raise a laugh. Some of the low points for me were:
- A whole dream-like sequence (to the strains of Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is”) involving a reanimated snowman. This seems to be trying to ape the “Something Good” musical interlude in the original film, but for me it failed miserably;
- There’s a whole spiel about American Football at one point which probably worked for a US audience (or Superbowl fans here) but zipped straight over my head;
- An owl sequence – the spirit of Frank Drebin Snr – is just plain daft;
- Some of the callbacks to the original films were just too on the nose to work: Beth (Pamela Anderson) walking into a pillar for example, which was funny when Pricilla Presley did it as Jane Spencer, but not here;
- The closing ‘freeze’ to Ira Newborn’s classic theme. These were only funny because they were done ‘in camera’. This was just bloody cheating!
“Shouldn’t they have got a comedy actor”
I saw this comment on a social media post about this film with the suggestion that Jim Carrey would have been better in the lead role. No… a thousand times NO! It is worth remembering that before the Zucker’s brought him into “Airplane!”, “Police Squad” and “The Naked Gun”, Leslie Nielsen was an absolutely solid straight-laced dramatic actor in movies. He was the stoic captain for example in “The Poseidon Adventure”. His ability to deadpan his way through ridiculous lines was his greatest asset.
Similarly, the choice of his close namesake, Liam Neeson (whose desperate “Taken”-like thriller output has been looking more and more tired of late: case in point, last year’s dreadful “Retribution“) was inspired. I saw comment from Mark Kermode that Neeson doesn’t have the same comic nous and ‘signposts’ some of the gags. I actually tend to disagree with the Good Doctor. Whilst he doesn’t have the comedic gifts that Nielsen had (who does?), Nielsen’s Drebin often reacted to his own Naked Gun gags in a similar way to Neeson. I think this was a really effective effort from the Norn-Irish star.
Ably supporting him is Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport (who was a character in “The Rockford Files” if I’m not mistaken?). Anderson is coming off the back of great late-career acclaim for her superb part in “The Last Showgirl” and here pulls out another great career volte face in switching to a comic role. She struts and purrs her way through the part and her ‘scat-jazz’ diversion piece was another funny part of the film for me.
Avoid the trailer!
Another criticism of the film is the trailer. Marketing firms don’t seem to learn that, for a comedy film, we don’t want to see all the best gags. The teaser trailer (which I append below) was bad enough, ruining the surprise of the little girl arriving at the bank heist. But the ‘full trailer’ takes all the best bits and shoehorns them all into the two and a half minutes. Just. Stop. It!
It’s a shame it’s a 15 certificate.
The BBFC have rated this a ’15’ for “strong sex”, clearly viewing the “infra-red” shadow-puppet scene as stepping into very unsavoury territory: which it does! Which is a shame, since, without that, I think this would probably have got away with a 12A and my older grandkids (11 and 9) would have enjoyed it.
It’s actually a surprise to me that the MPAA have only given the film a US certificate of PG-13. They are normally so prurient about sexual content, it makes me wonder whether this scene was significantly cut in the US-distributed version?
Monkeys?
There is a monkey immediately after the first titles, with Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) announcing the resurrection of “Police Squad”. Then over the main titles (with the usual mix of comedy titling) is an audio of Frank Drebin in the recording studio recording his love song for Beth.
There is also a final monkey at the end of the titles which features one of the cameos from earlier in the film. (My thanks to ‘motelsiren’ on Threads for jogging my poor aged memory about this!)
Summary Thoughts on “The Naked Gun”
I can’t deny that I enjoyed this night out at the cinema, as did the Illustrious Mrs Movie Man. It is really good to have a good laugh at the cinema for a change. Was it perfect? No. Far from it. But I hope this gives producer Seth MacFarlane and team a platform to build a second film on. Because I would certainly welcome that.
Where to watch?
Trailer for “The Naked Gun”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8-N8IIq_8I. I’ve chosen the teaser trailer for this since it only ruins two of the best jokes. Honestly, the full trailer (here if you have already seen the film) gives so many of the great gags away you might as well not bother. If by some miracle you have avoided the trailer, you will greatly enjoy the pre-credit scene.
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