Joyce Glasser reviews The Naked Gun (August 1, 2025) Cert 15, 85 mins.
For every overworked, underpaid detective woken up in the middle of a cold rainy night, finding a coffee is like finding El Dorado. Then there’s Frank Drebin Jr (Liam Neeson), who doesn’t even have to ask for one. A running gag through Akiva Schaffer’s reboot, The Naked Gun, is that when an officer is not around Drebin is handed a take away latte in increasingly large cups by invisible hands working off-screen. At one point a cup arrives through the window of his car, and another when he’s hanging onto the talons of an owl (don’t ask) to pounce on his prey, the bad guy.
Replacing Leslie Nielson who owned the role of Frank Drebin throughout the 1980’s TV series created by the Abrahams, Zuckerberg and Zuckerberg trio, and the three subsequent feature films), Liam Neeson, who shares his predecessor’s initials, steps up to the bat as his son Drebin Jr. And he steps into a battery of sight gags, deadpan nonsensical one liners, slapstick and – in a hilarious sequence so puerile that only 12-year-old boys should giggle through it – visual sexual innuendo.
But first Liam Neeson fills the entire Imax screen with gravitas in a plea for us to help save cinema and the at-risk comedy genre. It’s gravitas the man cast as Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List miraculously discards in the inane, absurdist comedy that follows, written by director Akiva Schaffer with Dan Gregor and Doug Mand.
Neeson has a point. Where are the laugh-out-loud, side splitting comedies like Blazing Saddles, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, Bridesmaids and The Hangover?
Neeson, 72, is also making a plea for “old men” in the cinema. Praised for catching the bad guy (more error than trial), Frank, not known for his modesty concludes: ‘I guess old men are the smartest, sexiest, most competent people on the planet.’
Frank’s bragging can backfire. In a sequence, the idea of which is cleverer than the execution, Frank sets out to prove a suspect’s guilt by his displaying to a large audience bodycam images that reveal a lot more than the suspect. After a while you stop cringing at dialogue like ‘you can’t fight City Hall,’ ‘No, it’s a building’ and embrace the gags and one-liners that come at you faster than the white dots in an eye field vision test.
Frank thinks he’s pulled off the coup of the year, when, disguised as a little girl with a lollipop, he skips past police snipers – ruining their operation as they have to halt their raid – and into the bank. Frightened customers huddle on the ground while robbers empty the vaults. Suddenly Frank stands up straight to reveal a full grown man in a kilt who knocks off the unsuspecting robbers one or three at a time. At one point he rests a leg on a step in triumph, revealing his red polka dot underpants under the kilt.
You got to love a film that has P.L.O.T. Device emblazoned on a phone-sized gizmo removed from a bank vault during a bank robbery. Frank, busy upstairs, doesn’t know that for master criminal Richad Cane (Danny Huston) the cash robbery is a distraction. Underneath, Cane’s right hand man (Kevin Durand) is seizing the device.
Cane needs the device to infect the population with a toxic gas that will (think of humans glued to their mind altering social media) revert civilians to zombie like primal beings while the ultra-wealthy hide in a private bunker. You might imagine escaping to Richard Branson’s Necker Island until you learn these desert island disc losers will be be subjected to a nonstop performance from “Weird Al” Yankovic (as himself).
The plot is the weakest link, but that’s all part of the spoof on zany, senseless plots. The last Mission Impossible springs to mind. And who cares about the plot when Pamela Anderson appears as the revenge-seeking sister of Simon Davenport, who has to persuade Frank that his brother’s very suspicious death was not a car accident.
The Chandleresque meeting in Frank’s office introduces us to Beth Davenport in a scene straight out of The Big Sleep, another film where characters, rather than the plot are behind the appeal. What a surprise that the chemistry between the two works a treat. Reminiscent of Anderson’s character in her recent come-back film, The Last Showgirl, Beth distracts the smitten Cane with a nightclub number while Frank sneaks back stage to clobber an orderly queue of Cane’s lackies and then some.
Unlike the last feature with Nielson, The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), Schaffer wants this reboot to look like a big budget feature – perhaps to contrast with the trashy content. He enlists, as cinematographer, Brandon Trost – a collaborator of comedian Seth Rogan – to create cinematic effects and, in the scenes with Anderson, an appealing film noir atmosphere.
Acknowledging his father, whose picture (along with all the other cops’ fathers) lines the wall of the Police Squad office, Frank Jr seeks his blessing: ‘It’s me, Frank Jr. I just want to be like you, but refreshed and original.’ Has he, and the film, succeeded? Not all the gags work, but enough do. With a refreshingly taut running time of 85 minutes, Schaffer leaves us wanting more.
