By Joshua Tyler
| Published
In the 1970s and 1980s, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker pioneered a completely unique comedy style and expressed it in a series of films so funny that the mere mention of any one of them still makes people smile. Let’s try it right now. Airplane! I saw your lips curl.
Until this week, when I saw the new version of The Naked Gun, I’d have said that style was impossible to duplicate. But this movie, made with no help from the Zuckers (who offered but were rejected), does it.
With apologies to 33 ⅓, the 2025 Naked Gun is the best Naked Gun movie since Naked Gun 2. It might even top the second if Leslie Nielsen were still alive and in the movie’s lead role.
Instead, we get Liam Neeson as Frank Drebbin Jr. It’s an inspired choice. Nielsen started his career as a dramatic performer, and the genius of his comedy work was his way of playing everything deadly serious and straight. You don’t need a comedian to duplicate that; you need a serious actor, a serious actor willing to be put in ridiculous situations.
Liam fills the role well. No one could top Leslie, but he’s a good second-best. He has real chemistry with co-star Pam Anderson, joyously back on screen after a mini-retirement.
I won’t waste your time with the plot, because who cares. That’s not the point of these movies. In the view of The Naked Gun, plot is for untalented writers who can’t make jokes. What matters is whether or not The Naked Gun is funny, and hell yes, it is.
The genius of past Police Squad entries was how hard they worked to be funny. Like the Police Squad TV series and the Leslie Nielsen movies, every single second of this new Naked Gun is stuffed with jokes. There’s not a piece of dialogue or a frame in the film that isn’t at least trying to be funny. Most of the time, it succeeds.
There are so many jokes of so many types that a laugh is guaranteed unless you’re in the 5% of humans who don’t have a sense of humor (yes, that’s a real statistic). You’re likely to laugh at almost all of it. It’s that good.
Here’s my favorite bit: Frank is reading a criminal’s rap sheet and says, “It says here you’re doing 25 years for Man’s Laughter.” Insert dramatic Liam Neeson pause here. “It must have been one hell of a joke.”
The Naked Gun is one hell of a joke. It’s the funniest movie of the decade. Go have a laugh.
THE NAKED GUN (2025) REVIEW SCORE
