The 2025 "Naked Gun" reboot, directed by Akiva Schaffer, arrives like a clown car at a funeral—gleefully inappropriate, overstuffed with gags, and somehow, against all odds, a riotous good time. It’s a legacy sequel that doesn’t so much dust off the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker (ZAZ) formula as it does strap it to a rocket and launch it into the present, propelled by the improbable comedic might of Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. This is a film that knows its place: a gleeful, 85-minute assault on the funny bone, less concerned with reinventing the wheel than with running it over pedestrians in a police cruiser. And yet, for all its adherence to the slapstick gospel, it’s Neeson and Anderson who elevate this farce from mere nostalgia to a masterclass in deadpan lunacy.
The plot, such as it is, follows Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson), son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic buffoon, as he bumbles through a conspiracy involving a tech mogul named Richard Cane (Danny Huston, oozing smarm like a discount Elon Musk). Enter Beth Davenport (Anderson), a femme fatale with a voice like a smoky lounge and a brain like a particularly dim chandelier. Together, they unravel a scheme involving a “P.L.O.T. Device” (yes, it’s labelled as such), dodging bullets, bad puns, and Frank’s own trousers with the grace of a drunk giraffe. The story is a clothesline for gags—sight gags, wordplay, and a chili-dog-induced bathroom meltdown that deserves its own Oscar for scatological audacity. It’s not War and Peace, but it’s not trying to be; it’s a Zucker-esque fever dream, and it hits more often than it misses.
Visually, the film is a love letter to the ZAZ aesthetic, all garish colours and exaggerated noir shadows, with a modern polish that keeps it from feeling like a museum piece. Schaffer, a Lonely Island alum, directs with a manic precision, packing every frame with visual Easter eggs and throwaway gags—a coffee cup handed to Frank in every other scene, a “customers served” scoreboard for dispatched henchmen. The action sequences are absurdly well-choreographed, blending slapstick with a knowing nod to Neeson’s Taken-era heroics. Lorne Balfe’s score, riffing on the classic Police Squad! theme, adds a brassy swagger that makes even the most ludicrous moments feel oddly epic. It’s a film that looks like it was born in a comic book and raised in a vaudeville hall, and it’s all the better for it.
Now, to the beating heart of this lunacy: Liam Neeson. The man who once growled his way through Taken with a particular set of skills here deploys a particular set of sills, turning Frank Drebin Jr. into a grizzled, coffee-slurping parody of his own action-hero persona. Neeson’s deadpan is a thing of beauty—his gravelly delivery of lines about the Black Eyed Peas or Buffy the Vampire Slayer is so earnest it could make a stone weep with laughter. Whether he’s karate-chopping goons or lamenting his TiVo’s loss of Sex and the City episodes, Neeson plays it straight, never winking, never faltering, as if he’s auditioning for a Shakespearean tragedy rather than a film where he dresses as a schoolgirl to foil a bank heist. It’s a performance that doesn’t just honour Nielsen’s legacy; it carves out its own, proving that Neeson, at 73, is as much a comedic force as he is a dramatic one.
And then there’s Pamela Anderson, who, as Beth Davenport, steals scenes with the effortless charm of a woman who’s been underestimated her entire career. Channelling Priscilla Presley’s Jane Spencer with a breezy, ditzy allure, Anderson delivers lines like “I see UCLA every day, I live here” with a breathy sincerity that lands like a perfectly timed rimshot. Her chemistry with Neeson is electric, particularly in a deranged love montage involving a Satanic snowman that spirals into Too Many Cooks-level absurdity. Anderson’s comedic timing is impeccable, her every glance and toss of hair a masterstroke of parody. She’s not just playing a femme fatale; she’s playing the idea of one, and the result is a performance that’s as hilarious as it is revelatory. If her work in The Last Showgirl was a comeback, this is a coronation.
"The Naked Gun" is a triumph of commitment to the bit, a film that revels in its own stupidity with such gusto that you can’t help but laugh along. It’s not flawless—the third act sags under the weight of its own plot, and some jokes feel like they were exhumed from a 2000s time capsule—but Neeson and Anderson carry it with such infectious zeal that you forgive the misfires. This is a film that knows exactly what it is: a big, dumb, beautiful return to the kind of comedy that demands a theatre full of strangers cackling together. It’s a B+ effort that feels like an A for effort, and in a world starved for laughs, that’s more than enough.