The Naked Gun
2 stars (out of 4)
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Starring: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser and Danny Huston
Rated: PG-13 for crude/sexual material, violence/bloody images and brief partial nudity
Available: In theaters
If you found yourself wondering if we needed a new Naked Gun film in 2025, you aren’t alone. Also, for the record, we didn’t.
Nevertheless, writer-director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, Palm Springs) has rolled the franchise into theaters as a legacy sequel paying tribute to the original films while continuing the saga they began.
The focus of The Naked Gun is on Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), son of legendary officer Frank Drebin (Leslie Neilsen) from the earlier pictures. The action-packed opening sequence demonstrates that the junior Drebin is a chip off the old block, and most of the new film mirrors plot points from 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Drebin is somehow an accomplished officer despite buffoonery that constantly lands him in hot water, and he quickly finds himself on a case that may involve one of his city’s most prominent businessmen, Richard Cane (Danny Huston). His work is aided by Capt. Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), son of his father’s former partner, Ed Hocken Sr. (George Kennedy). Of course, it’s only a matter of time before they meet a voluptuous vixen (Pamela Anderson) who may or may not be trustworthy. In other words, anyone familiar with the franchise will find themselves in comfortable territory.
The humor in Naked Gun films, both old and new, is essentially ceded to dad jokes, assuming your father is a semi-dirty old man who never quite moved beyond his early teens. Viewers get pratfalls, dumb (but often laugh-worthy) one liners and plenty of sexual innuendo. Those who warm to this formula should find at least a smattering of laugh-worthy scenes in the new film, but it’s not fair to call it good. At best, The Naked Gun is a quick-moving, nostalgic reminder of the Neilsen pictures. At worst, it’s a spinoff that takes no significant chances while firing a barrage of hit-and-miss gags that fall short of the target too often.
Neeson, an actor who remade himself into an action star in the second act of a brilliant career, seemed an odd choice for the junior Drebin, but he is adept at humor and does a reasonable job with the material. Of course, comparisons with Neilsen are unavoidable, and Neeson is missing the off-kilter spark the former actor brought to the role. Neilsen had an uncanny ability to walk the senior Drebin between absurd comedy and wacky action sequences, while Neeson’s attempts feel more forced. Perhaps it’s because audiences have seen Neeson play an actual badass one too many times -- or maybe the material is simply tired.
Likewise, the new supporting players fall short. The performances are workable, but Anderson doesn’t sell her sultry love interest role with the same conviction Priscilla Presley did in the earlier movies. Likewise, Hauser is a step shy of Kennedy. And, although very good, Danny Huston doesn’t have the sinister spark that Ricardo Montalban (an obvious counterpart from the first movie) delivered as a baddie in 1988.
That is The Naked Gun in a nutshell. It’s just close enough to the earlier material to remind us that the “real thing” is better. Schaffer makes endless callbacks to the previous movies, but he never surpasses them or dares to take things in new directions. That leaves viewers with the cinematic equivalent of a bad Xerox copy. The content is there, but only if you fight through the blurred text and streaking.
Author Bio:
Forrest Hartman is Highbrow Magazine’s chief film critic.
For Highbrow Magazine