The Naked Gun (2025)

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ergeant Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), a wearied but highly effective detective for the Police Squad, continually finds his old-school methods of law-enforcement at odds with both his superiors and the institution’s modern ethics of policing. After numerous headline-grabbing gaffes land Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) in hot water, she reassigns Drebin and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) from a high-profile bank robbery case to a supposed suicide car crash in Malibu. But when the victim’s sister, Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), contacts Drebin and insists on inserting herself into his case, it isn’t long before the two are mixed up in a conspiracy involving a murderous security head (Kevin Durand), a billionaire tech magnate (Danny Huston), and a nefarious plan to plunge the world into darkness.

Opening with the severity and intensity of “The Dark Knight,” with pounding music, tattered nerves, and repeated gunfire during a heist, “The Naked Gun” opts for an extremely opposing tone for the events to come. It’s a wise move; when it suddenly adopts a distinct non-reality with its practically supernatural hero, the contrast is markedly greater. And so are the laughs; the nonsense is a stark antipode to the life-and-death scenario of armed thieves.

“Things are changing so fast here.” Except, they’re actually not changing at all; the setting may be present-day, but the wacky signage and activities at the Police Squad headquarters, the film noir voiceover narration full of peculiar similes, and the constant screwball accidents all return, sharply mirroring the shenanigans of the original television show and the trilogy of theatrical films that followed. The literal interpretations of phrases and words, the questions answered by matter-of-fact definitions, the over-the-top sound effects, the countless misunderstandings, the deadpan responses, and the wealth of visual and verbal gags all tend to fit right into the universe of “Police Squad!” It’s relatively impressive that despite the modernization of the plot, the gimmicks of yore manage to work their way into the interactions.

As with the previous pictures, the onslaught of jests, slapstick, and destruction (basically a nonstop display of “dad jokes”) are hit or miss; with so many thrown at the screen in an unrelenting barrage, not all of them are destined to land. But beyond the sheer silliness, the main question becomes: will contemporary viewers appreciate what is being done here? Fortunately, even as the very nature of suspension-of-disbelief is stretched to its maximum, the script musters some gut-busting one-liners, double entendres, and non-sequitur interruptions. Curiously, the murder/mystery plot is one of the weakest components, as it reminds of the ideas in the Austin Powers series (or, ironically, the “Kingsman” entries, which were meant to be taken more seriously) and often disrupts Drebin from continuing with his comical rubbish. He genuinely unravels details about a frame-job and the world-ending machinations, solving some of the mysteries, which feels inconsistent with the ways in which the original Drebin stumbled, chaotically, into answers and solutions.

Unlike the prior films, this one dispenses with movie parodies, while cameos are limited as well (it keeps the end credits mockery, however). The main problem is actually the pacing; it starts off so strongly, with such outrageous hijinks, that it can’t possibly maintain the momentum. As a result, once the story proper gets underway, the absurdities slow down. The finale may pick up a little bit of what was lost in the middle, but it still could have benefited from a sustained goofiness – or a much more foolish villain with a much more cockamamie scheme. Still, the filmmakers have done an excellent job of recreating a forgotten type of comedy that, perhaps, few audiences will embrace.

– The Massie Twins