The Naked Gun stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the original Frank Drebin. As the star of Police Squad, Frank finds the world that he once thrived in to be slowly fading away. During this rough emotional time, he runs into a robbery and car crash causality that turn out to be connected.
The heart of this silly story is both an affirmation of the many flaws that old comedy and older perspectives can bring as well as an appreciation for the timeless parts of comedy and humanity that connect us all. The main antagonist represents a lot of the flaws in the old perspective as someone who is moving into the future as a businessman but uses technology to try to restore the way things were in his time, not unlike those wealthy and powerful in our world. Like current powerful people, the villain Richard Caine (Danny Huston) is using his powers to keep the status quo that keeps him in power. The same can be said about Frank Drebin though. At the start of this film, he is a cop who longs for the old days but is now being pushed out of his comfort zone by protocol and accountability. However, over the course of the film, he is pushed to filter the flaws of his past and focus on the true human emotions that motivate him to keep on living, one namely being love.
Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
Neeson himself might be seen as someone who may prefer the ways of old as it would have saved him a lot of trouble with the internet mob that came for him a few years ago. But, with this new role, he embraces a new life and a new way of living just as his character Frank does. Frank finally opens his heart to Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), a woman who happens to be the sister of a recently deceased man whose death Frank discovers. In this case, life appears to imitate art and art imitates life as rumours swirl that Anderson and Neeson are now dating. The two do have wonderful chemistry that makes you view them as a pair, rather than the personas that have marked their careers. Here, they are able to step into something fresh, especially Anderson who continues to flex her capabilities and range as an actor after her more dramatic acclaimed work in The Last Showgirl.
This is a film that boldly tests the waters to see if they can both make fun of and appeal to the older generation, who will have to get in a theatre to get word of mouth going. It’s a true romp. By its sheer number of jokes, barely a beat goes by without a joke in the foreground or background, either verbal or visual.
Paul Walter Hauser plays Ed Hocken Jr. and Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in the Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
However, the weakest humour are the visual jokes as the filmmaking didn’t often feel like it was a strong accompaniment to them. The visual humor felt a bit more unexplored and replaced with expected slapstick and some delightful (but also not super hilarious) set pieces. The cinematography, for example, lives to serve the sets and the interesting concepts for jokes that were written but this film, at times, feels a bit too much in the script and not as much in the frame.
While great for those roles, the actors never feel uniquely gifted for their roles. Pamela Anderson is a stand out as she leans into her comedic sensibilities well. She is a natural fit into the world that the film establishes but she, herself, never ever feels like the centre of it. The voice of the film is always in the hands of the script and so, when the script makes its strongest quips and set ups, you bet your audience will laugh. However, Naked Gun felt like it had even more potential. Perhaps not enough room is given to the characters to be funny by their existence or small actions, something that would have elevated the film overall.
Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
This film is pretty close to a best case scenario for this reboot that hopes to make different studio comedies into a brand. If successful, it will inevitably make way for more reboots of 2000s and late-90s classics and Naked Gun does prove that may not be a terrible thing, if the film is in hands of writers and creatives as strong as the ones who worked on this film. It does an impressive job making a case for the modern comedy when there are so many of niches of humor in our phones and curated for us by the biggest companies in the world. If films with this level of creativity and bravery find the more timeless concepts for humour that can avoid offending and get a crowd talking, then this kind of comedy should be more than welcome.
The Naked Gun is available in theatres on Friday, August 1st, 2025.
