Life
The Naked Gun review: Liam Neeson is perfectly cast in this hoot of a reboot ★★★★
Akiva Schaffer has revived the franchise with Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport
July 31, 2025 13:23
Akiva Schaffer has revived the franchise with Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport
July 31, 2025 13:23Jewish comedians are not only responsible for Jewish humour, you know. Some of them are responsible for the funniest bad taste ever created.
Leaving aside Mel Brooks who excels at both, there is Adam Sandler currently hitting golf balls and people in his knockabout comedy Happy Gilmore 2 which was preceded by number one in 1996.
Now, writer director Akiva Schaffer has revived the even longer dormant The Naked Gun franchise in which a perfectly cast Liam Neeson exudes seriousness in the face of ridiculousness and steps into the gum shoes of Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the dead-pan cop unforgettably played many times over by Leslie Nielsen.
Homage is duly paid. In an early scene set in Police Squad’s HQ, Neeson kneels before a framed photograph of Nielsen asking his late father for a sign to help guide him through his latest case. “Maybe an owl or something?”, he suggests.
Yes, Neeson’s Drebin is the son of Nielsen’s just as this latest The Naked Gun has the genes of the three previous versions made by the now-retired Jewish triple threat comedy team Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.
Drebin Jr’s baffling case involves a criminal mastermind (a suitably dastardly Danny Huston) who has in his possession an electronic box which brings out the violent murderer in those within reach of the frequency it emits. Once triggered, the villain and his other corporate alpha males will hide until humanity has whittled itself down to a few deserving survivors. Or something.
More importantly the stolen box’s true purpose emerges when, after a seriously filmed bank raid, the tech is revealed to have the letters P.L.O.T. written on it. Below is the word “DEVICE”. Settle down. There is plenty more where that one came from.
What follows is an avalanche of verbal, visual, physical and scatological gags that bludgeon the audience into responding with that sought by all comedy: out-loud laughter. In another joke the film literally puts the laughter into manslaughter. Brilliant.
If one joke misses, the next will hit. And if that one doesn’t, wait a few seconds for the next. Someone should count them.
Much of Schaffer’s previous work has been with the skit-making trio Lonely Island which is credited with saving a flagging Saturday Night Live and helped launch the career of fellow co-founder Adam Samberg. The format well suits The Naked Gun which is essentially a series of sketches linked together by a nostalgically predictable plot.
Film clichés are exhumed and skewered, none more so than Pamela Anderson’s Beth Davenport, the mandatory desirable female in distress who turns to Drebin to solve her brother’s murder which is unsurprisingly linked to the P.L.O.T. Device. The resulting romantic sequence shot in soft focus is a hands down hoot.
If I have a gripe, it is that the gags are mostly lampooning the same filmmaking conventions targeted by the original movie. But what was funny then turns out to be just as funny now.
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