“The Naked Gun” Is a Mostly Fun Farce

The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer, 2025) 3 out of 5 stars

Akiva Schaffer returns to theaters with The Naked Gun, the latest installment in the Police Squad franchise. We follow Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson, In the Land of Saints and Sinners), son of Leslie Nielsen’s character from the original Naked Gun trilogy. Like the previous films, much of The Naked Gun’s humor is built on sight gags, puns, and dead-serious line deliveries. Not every joke lands, but the film eventually finds its footing with some genuine laughs.

After foiling a Dark Knight-inspired bank heist, a recently widowed Lt. Drebin investigates a seemingly mundane car accident. However, he uncovers a vast conspiracy involving evil billionaires and mind control. Along the way, Drebin becomes romantically entangled with the victim’s sister, Beth (Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl). Now, the two must work together to solve the mystery before it’s too late.

Admittedly, The Naked Gun has a rough start. It goes for the same kind of gross-out gags that the original films were known for, but many of them fall flat. However, by the beginning of the second act, the film begins to click. If Nielsen’s films parodied ‘80s action flicks, this one is updated for the 2020s. Mission: Impossible and Kingsman are frequent targets, even down to Lorne Balfe’s dramatic score. Schaffer leans into the more absurd material he used to make with the Lonely Island troupe and it works in The Naked Gun’s favor.

Performance-wise, Liam Neeson understands the sort of hard-boiled detective he’s satirizing and commits to the ridiculousness. Pamela Anderson gets to be funny in a way no one’s asked her to be in decades. They even get their own “falling-in-love” montage like in the original Naked Gun, one of the film’s standout sequences. As for the supporting cast, Danny Huston (The Dead Don’t Hurt) gets to be devious as twisted billionaire Richard Cane. Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell) is goofy as usual as Capt. Ed Hocker Jr., especially in the third act. Lastly, CCH Pounder (Rustin) delights as Police Squad’s Chief Davis (basically a sendup of the kind of roles she typically plays).

More than anything, The Naked Gun is trying to be a throwback to the kind of crazy character-based comedies that used to come out in the 1990s/2000s. I can say that Schaffer and Co. come close to succeeding, but don’t quite translate the fun of the original. Still, it’s a legacy sequel that mostly lives up to the predecessor.

George W. Campbell

George W. Campbell is a director/screenwriter/editor from Bowie, Maryland, whose films focus on themes of family and personal relationships. As a Nicaraguan-American filmmaker, he aims to highlight specific parts of his culture and personal experiences (songs, dances, foods, and language).