The Naked Gun: Movie Review

Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, CCH Pounder
Director: Akiva Schaffer

The 2025 take on the Leslie Nielsen classic franchise is clearly a lesson in reverent love.

Persuaded by Seth MacFarlane and his production company Fuzzy Door, Neeson takes on the role of Frank Drebin Jr and into the inane silliness of the Police Squad. When Drebin goes too far in a bank robbery acting above the law, he's confined to traffic duty.

His first job sees him investigating an apparent suicide of a car going off a cliff - but he soon suspects there's more to do the case than meets the eye. And when he meets a dame (Anderson) and a tech bro (Huston), he decides to disobey protocol to carry out his investigation.

The 2025 version of The Naked Gun has its moments.

It's clearly taken on the silly wordplay of the originals and the Airplane! series which loved to roll out bad jokes, terrible one-liners and the kind of humour you'd cringe at from your father. And while there's no denying there are moments and one-liners that absolutely reek of silliness and old style corniness, there's occasionally a feeling that it's somewhat forced.

Neeson is effectively game, and the film scores major points for only running for 85 minutes, stretching the joke as far as it can go. But about midway through, it feels like it's run out of steam, a joke that's trying too hard and with a hero that delivers deadpan, yet occasionally feels like he's not quite put his full heart into it.

Perhaps more a success via its marketing than a riotous cinematic success that will endure through the ages, The Naked Gun shows the film's worked in the past because of Leslie Nielsen's rubbery gameness to indulge the plot's fripperies.

More a pale imitation of what went before, The Naked Gun brings the fun, and very limited funnies - but nothing else.