When it comes to comedy, it is so much about personality, and that statement could not be better personified than Leslie Nielsen in his most iconic role as Lt. Frank Drebin. Having first collaborated with the comedy filmmaking trio of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker in 1980’s Airplane!, which reinvented his on-screen persona from serious actor to deadpan comedy legend, Nielsen would initially play Drebin in the failed television series Police Squad!, which only ran for six episodes. Nielsen would reprise as the bumbling cop in The Naked Gun, one of the greatest comedy films of all time that would spawn two sequels.
Following the passing of Leslie Nielsen in 2010, there have been numerous attempts to revive The Naked Gun series, with someone else playing Frank Drebin. This always sounded troublesome, not least of which was that since Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker pioneered that style of fast-paced slapstick comedy that parodied various genres, we have seen that subgenre devolved at the hands of various filmmakers such as the many Wayans that started the Scary Movie series. However, against all odds, producer Seth MacFarlane and director/co-writer Akiva Schaffer successfully bring new life to this legendary comedy series.
Instead of a full-blown reboot, 2025’s The Naked Gun is a legacy sequel that follows Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) trying to honor his father’s legacy with the hope of doing his own thing as a lieutenant for Police Squad. After messing up an investigation regarding the bank heist that opens the movie, Drebin is assigned to a case which involves murder, true-crime novelist Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) and the evil tech CEO Richard Cane (Danny Huston) who has his hands on something called a P.L.O.T. Device.
Considering the involvement of the aforementioned Seth MacFarlane whose brand of comedy going all the way back to Family Guy was clearly inspired by films like Airplane! and the original The Naked Gun, this is purely an Akiva Schaffer joint as he and his co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand nicely fit into the silly situations that have defined the series. Ranging from mockumentaries like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping to the Who Framed Roger Rabbit-styled detective storytelling of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Schaffer has always embraced the surrealism throughout his various comedy work and that is apparent here from its opening in which Drebin unmasks himself in Mission: Impossible after disguising himself as a little girl.
As often the case with this kind of film, the plot is almost secondary, which includes the villain’s scheme that seems lifted from Kingsman: The Secret Service. Along with Drebin’s noirish voiceover that goes off on strange tangents, what drives the film are the many visual and verbal puns and gags. Like the original films, the jokes are constantly being thrown at that if the audience laughs at one joke, they’ve probably missed two or three more that have occurred. With a running time of only 85 minutes, the quick pace and rapid firing of jokes can be too much, and while not every joke lands, especially when it comes to toilet and sexual humor, Liam Neeson reigns supreme.
Ever since 2008’s Taken, Neeson has redefined himself as a latter-day action star and yet the more action movies he made, that persona started to become stale to the point of parody. Since the whole film is shot like an 80s action movie, you could see Neeson’s action persona creeping in, but since he is playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic turn, Neeson delivers the silliest dialogue that occasionally takes shots at pop culture in a deadpan manner and it’s hilarious. The other big surprise is Pamela Anderson who has gone through a recent career resurgence after The Last Showgirl, but here, she balances seduction and slapstick so well and you would never think that her and Neeson would have such comedic chemistry.
