By George & Josh Bate
“Every passing year, more and more comedies go unmade, unseen, and unquoted,” says Liam Neeson in a genius piece of marketing for the new The Naked Gun movie that laments the lack of comedies nowadays. Neeson and the marketing team behind The Naked Gun aren’t wrong. Comedies, especially those produced and distributed by major studios, have dwindled in number as audiences find their fix for laughs in television and lighter blockbuster fare. The very idea of a studio comedy feels saddeningly old-fashioned, which strangely makes a revival of The Naked Gun franchise the perfect movie to tap into the bygone era of major comedies and give viewers genuine laughs. And that’s exactly what Akiva Schaffer, Liam Neeson, and company do in bringing back Police Squad, resulting in 2025’s funniest movie.
Serving as the fourth film in the franchise, The Naked Gun (2025) follows Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielson’s character from the previous films. After coming under fire for his handling of a bank robbery, Drebin is tasked with investigating a suspicious death with ties to crime author Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) and tech mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston).
The original Naked Gun movies featured a unique sense of absurd, surrealist humor that the 2025 legacy sequel flawlessly replicates. Just like Leslie Nielsen’s iconic comedy trilogy, Akiva Schaffer’s new film is filled to the brim with slapstick humor, sight gags, deadpan line delivery, wordplay, parody, running gags, and more. The film throws subtly out the window, wearing its jokes on its sleeve with on the nose laughs from start to finish. Bolstered by a brisk runtime of 85 minutes, the jokes-to-minute ratio is ridiculously high, so much so that audiences will likely find themselves missing a joke as they continue laughing from the previous one. As is the case with almost all comedies, not every joke lands and the story alone doesn’t inspire much interest, but, overwhelmingly, The Naked Gun excels with a type of humor that, while on the surface can be perceived as dumb or immature, is the result of meticulous planning and clever directing and writing.
Through its old school sense of absurd humor, The Naked Gun operates as a faithful fourth installment to the beloved comedy franchise that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. In less capable hands, a legacy sequel like this may have gone awry with attempts to overly modernize the tone and story, but sharp filmmaking aligned with the sensibilities of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio who engineered the original films ensures The Naked Gun never loses touch with what makes these films so appealing in the first place. The jokes come quick and tap into a universal brand of humor that appeals to everyone, from the most naive of younger viewers to the most intelligent and sophisticated cinephiles. Not for a second should the ‘stupidity’ of the humor and tone be equated to a lack of craft here. On the contrary, there is a real art to making such silly jokes land as consistently well as they do.
Following the passing of Leslie Nielsen in 2010, any attempt to revive The Naked Gun franchise would inevitably face the perplexing question of who could step into a role perfected by one of cinema’s most iconic comedic presences. At first glance, Liam Neeson, who has made a career out of generic action flicks for the past 15-20 years, doesn’t seem like a logical successor, especially given the few comedic roles in the Irish actor’s lengthy filmography. But, within moments, Neeson resoundingly dispels any concerns and goes on to deliver a pitch perfect comedic performance. Given that Neeson features in virtually every scene, the film’s success as a comedy largely relies on Neeson’s ability to navigate the immense variety of absurd jokes he is tasked to deliver. Without missing a beat, Neeson takes this challenge in his stride and more than lives up to Leslie Nielsen’s legendary performance as Frank Drebin. Like Nielsen, Neeson plays Drebin with a hilarious seriousness that juxtaposes how surreal his surroundings are and delivers more than a laugh a minute from beginning to end. Neeson is clearly having so much fun performing out of his wheelhouse and demonstrates that, as much as he commands the screen in dramas and action flicks, may have tapped into his greatest strength of all later on in his career.
Playing the Priscilla Presley to Liam Neeson’s Leslie Nielsen is Pamela Anderson, who follows up her acclaimed turn in The Last Showgirl with a comedic performance unlike anything the actress has done before. Following in Neeson’s footsteps, Anderson deftly works within the formula of The Naked Gun and is responsible for laugh out loud wordplay, visual gags, and deadpan line delivery throughout. Anderson shares electrifying chemistry with Neeson that, unlike Nielsen and Presley’s romance in the original movies, which is played more for laughs and proves funny in how unfeasible it seems, creates a romance that feels surprisingly genuine and even, at times, touching.
Meanwhile, Danny Huston plays the Elon Musk-esque antagonist facing off against Neeson and Anderson. Huston leans into the juxtaposed seriousness of Ricardo Montalbán’s performance from the 1988 classic, but brings something else to the film’s central villain. In a film populated with fast-paced, slapstick comedy and one-liners from Neeson, Huston delivers some of the film’s best laughs, especially in a final act that had our stomachs aching from laughing so much.
To top it all off, The Naked Gun also features some light social commentary that pokes fun at police accountability (or lack thereof). The original trilogy did something similar in combating the romanticized depiction of police officers in favor of a portrayal of police as bumbling idiots, but director and co-writer Schaffer takes this a step further with a few jokes (especially the film’s concluding gag, which runs into the credits) that hold more relevance given the recent slew of police controversies.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
The Naked Gun serves as a return to form for theatrically released studio comedies and a faithful fourth installment in the beloved comedy franchise. Replicating the slapstick humor, sight gags, deadpan line delivery, wordplay, parody, running gags, and more from Leslie Nielsen’s iconic comedy trilogy, Akiva Schaffer’s legacy sequel / reboot flawlessly captures the spirit, tone, and humor of The Naked Gun series with a ridiculously high laugh-to-minute ratio. Although not every joke lands and the story alone doesn’t inspire much interest, clever directing and a meticulously crafted script imbue the film with a universally appealing sense of humor that, despite its overt absurdities, should not be equated to a lack of craft and care. Liam Neeson delivers a pitch-perfect comedic performance as Leslie Nielsen’s successor, never missing a beat and ensuring that the immense variety of absurd gags work as well as they do. Neeson shares electrifying chemistry with his screen partner Pamela Anderson, who similarly nails the film’s unique sense of humor and cultivates a surprisingly touching, genuine romance with Drebin. Danny Huston, meanwhile, plays an Elon Musk-esque tech mogul antagonist with similar comedic precision and is responsible for some of the film’s best laughs. Subverting temptations to overly modernize the franchise, Schaffer and company don’t try to reinvent the wheel, instead playing firmly within the formula of the original films and, in turn, creating a timeless comedy – one old fashioned in its comedic sensibilities, yet enduringly and undeniably hilarious from start to finish. Look no further for 2025’s funniest movie.