THE NAKED GUN
(15) 85mins
★★★★★
YOU have to be brave to bring back The Naked Gun – because the 1988 original starring the late Leslie Nielsen is such a beloved comedy classic.
You have to be even braver to begin the remake with a tongue-in-cheek sequence where your star, Liam Neeson, tells the audience that “less and less comedies are being made every year”.
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And then to deliver the pay-off line that “saving comedy is no laughing matter”.
That phrase would be an open goal for critics like me if there had been no laughs in the new Naked Gun.
Fortunately, this is one of the funniest films I have seen in years.
Liam plays Frank Drebin Jr, the son of Nielsen’s accident-prone detective Frank Drebin, who, like his dad, is a Los Angeles cop.
An investigation into the mysterious death of an employee at an electric car firm brings Junior into contact with Pamela Anderson’s sultry Beth Davenport.
Together they uncover a dastardly plot involving tech firm boss Richard Cane, brilliantly played by Danny Huston.
As the action hots up, so does the romance, with Pamela and Liam’s on-screen chemistry providing probably the most surprising casting success of 2025.
An early visual gag where a bank robber steals something with the words “P.L.O.T. Device” written on it tells us how unimportant the storyline is.
Everything in this film is set up to deliver a laugh.
There are lots of edgy jokes including one at the expense of the disgraced OJ Simpson, who was in the original film, and another about a drink from the Bill Cosby “estate”.
And there are many corny ones, such as Drebin mentioning “UCLA” and Beth replying: “I see it every day. I live here.”
There are also lots and lots of pratfalls paying homage to the first film, where Drebin would be oblivious to the chaos left in his wake.
‘CHEESY HUMOUR’
The thicker and faster they come, the harder it is to resist laughing out loud.
Before the film started, I was sceptical that such old-school, cheesy humour could still work.
But by the end I was convinced that it is the perfect alternative to all the modern meta comedies trying too hard to be clever.
Go save comedy. Go watch The Naked Gun.
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