THE NAKED GUN:
LIAM NEESON BRINGS THE LAUGHS IN UPROARIOUSLY FUNNY LEGACY SEQUEL!
By Nico Beland
Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun (2025)
Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Batman Begins, Taken trilogy) takes on the mantle from late comedy legend, Leslie Nielsen as police Lieutenant Frank Drebin (The new version) in the legacy sequel to The Naked Gun, the fourth film in the Naked Gun franchise which spawned from the TV series, Police Squad. I rewatched the original three Naked Gun movies from 1988-1994 in preparation for this review and I have to say the original Naked Gun film starring Leslie Nielsen earns its place as a comedy classic as it is just as funny in 2025 as it was in 1988 with jokes constantly thrown left and right and taking different forms whether it’s witty dialogue, visual gags, well-timed slapstick, or simply the wise decision of Leslie Nielsen playing his part completely straight thus making said moments infinitely funnier than if he was mugging to the camera and acting like an idiot throughout the films.
Easily some of the Zucker Brothers’ best work and sits right up there with comedies like Airplane! and Top Secret!. Now we have this legacy sequel produced by Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, American Dad, Ted franchise) and directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer (Hot Rod, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers) with Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s character from the original three films.
I was interested when the film was announced though I was initially taking a backseat when it was confirmed that Liam Neeson who was mostly known for action and dramatic performances was playing the lead. Then the trailers started to win me over as I thought it looked genuinely funny albeit in a dumb, goofy way which isn’t a strike against it at all.
Whether this movie is funny because it’s dumb, smart, or a bit of both, what matters is the laugh-factor and The Naked Gun (2025) is…one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year, hands down! I guess Friendship and the recent Looney Tunes movie are technically better made comedies, but this film kept the laughs coming a mile a minute all throughout the runtime and this is a movie I strongly urge people to go see in a theater with a crowd for the absolute best experience.
The film follows Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson), a man with a very particular set of skills, skills that make him a nightmare for people like…wait, wrong movie! The son of Frank Drebin who must succeed in his father’s footsteps to prevent Police Squad from closing by cracking a high-stakes case surrounding tech mogul, Richard Cane (Danny Huston-X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Big Eyes, Wonder Woman) who has a very sinister plot involving a literal P.L.O.T. Device unless Drebin can stop him in time and save the day.
The film also stars Pamela Anderson (Baywatch, Scooby-Doo, The Last Showgirl) as Beth Davenport, Paul Walter Hauser (Black Bird, Richard Jewell, The Fantastic Four: First Steps) as Capt. Ed Hocken Jr., CCH Pounder (The Shield, Avatar, DC Animated Universe) as Chief Davis, Kevin Durand (Dark Angel, Lost, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) as Sig Gustafson, and Liza Koshy (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Good Burger 2, KPop Demon Hunters) as Detective Barnes.
Overall, The Naked Gun (2025) is a long overdue return to comedies that are funny just for the sake of being funny without trying to go beyond that. This movie made me think back to those early Zucker Brothers or Mel Brooks comedies and even films like Shrek 2 and the Lord/Miller Jump Street movies that constantly throw joke after joke after joke and the majority of them hit bullseye.
I was sold just on the opening sequence which was shown in the trailers where Liam Neeson disguises himself as a little girl complete with a Mission: Impossible-style mask to thwart a bank robbery and seeing him take this criminals out in the most ridiculous ways imaginable made me laugh hard almost to the point of tears. There’s also a great running joke involving coffee that’s probably my favorite bit in the entire film every time it appears.
But what actually makes this movie funny is Liam Neeson himself as like Leslie Nielsen in the original films, he is playing this character 100% straight. Neeson’s version of Drebin is essentially his Taken character…if he just happened to walk into a comedy with him talking and acting like a badass yet he ends up doing goofy and outlandish things.
There’s also a nice albeit comedic tribute to Leslie Nielsen early on in the movie with Neeson and other police officers looking at a wall of deceased officers and one of them shows a picture of Nielsen as Drebin followed by a jab at O.J. Simpson. Even when The Naked Gun respects the dead, they’re still cracking jokes about them.
Despite thoroughly enjoying this movie, I don’t think it’s a perfect movie (Then again, I wasn’t really going in expecting that) and that’s because while Neeson and Pamela Anderson portray their roles well (Particularly the former), I personally think their romantic chemistry was as strong or well-developed as Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley from the earlier films. Yes, it’s still a very humorous relationship and not meant to be taken seriously, but I felt there was more time devoted to Nielsen and Presley than there was Neeson and Anderson here, maybe I’m just nitpicking.
Yeah, this new Naked Gun surpassed my expectations and delivers a hysterical, non-stop gag-packed ride with one of Liam Neeson’s best roles in a while. This is also the best Seth MacFarlane-related project since that Ted series on Peacock, I haven’t seen much new Family Guy or American Dad so I can’t comment on that, but this is some of the funniest MacFarlane material in quite some time for me.
In an age where Hollywood comedies struggle and are often dumped on streaming graveyards, The Naked Gun(2025) stands among the rest as a true big screen comedy in the best ways. Paramount, Schaffer, MacFarlane, and Neeson did good on this one so please go see it…also, Weird Al is in the movie!
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