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THE NAKED GUN
Director: Akiva Schaffer Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:25 Release Date: 8/1/25 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 31, 2025 Let's get to the first thing first: The Naked Gun is quite funny. That is, perhaps, all anyone needs to know about the belated fourth installment of this franchise, so if that is all you need to know, thanks for reading these two sentences. As for everyone else, you get to witness the challenge of trying to discuss a film that is pretty much wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling gags, with a couple stray ones in the basement, without giving away too many of the best punch lines. That was the method of the first three films in the series, in which the late, great Leslie Nielsen perfected the deadpan delivery that would keep him working for another couple decades. It didn't matter if a joke didn't hit in those, because most of the ones after would compensate. Besides, the one immediately before it might still be earning delayed chuckles. Co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer has maintained that approach here. Sure, there are a couple of duds, some stretches of time in which the plot takes over just a bit too much, and a slight inconsistency in whether the film wants to parody modern actioners or keep it grounded as a riff on old-fashioned cop dramas. Those are minor but relevant complaints that will surely feel completely irrelevant when one of the gags here is especially successful. When it achieves a kind comedic transcendence by stringing together good jokes in rapid succession, the film makes one wonder why this kind of movie stopped being made in the first place. The simple answer, of course, is that this kind of movie is much more difficult to make than it might appear. We have a stretch of Nielsen's later career, as well as other parodies in the 1990s and early 2000s, to prove that, but it's a genuine surprise to realize how very few and far between examples of this formula have become. It'd be nice to see a resurgence, but it would be with the caveat that they'd better at least be as cleverly dumb and silly as this one. Taking over the Nielsen role is a surprising casting choice on Schaffer's part. Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the unaware and bumbling police detective from the first three films (as well as the short-lived television series "Police Squad!"). In retrospect, Neeson's own career has mirrored his predecessor's in a certain way. Before becoming the king of dry comedy, Nielsen was a serious actor, and obviously, Neeson has done that, before becoming a mainstay in action movies and thrillers over the course of almost two decades now. When his Frank Jr. shows up to foil a bank robbery, Schaffer stages and shoots the sequence like the real deal, which only makes it funnier when Neeson blocks one bad guy from shooting him, grabs the gun of another and crumbles it to pieces in his hand, and takes a bite of a third baddy's pistol. The secret to a film like this, perhaps, is that everyone on screen has to take every goofy and absurd moment seriously. Otherwise, the entire illusion would collapse, because people trying to be funny isn't nearly as funny as funny things happening to and around people who aren't aware of how funny they are. In that way, Neeson is about as perfect a choice for this role as one could hope to have. He gets the joke, which is that his character isn't in on it. Frank goes about his day, narrating the whole thing (leading to a great bit involving dueling, overlapping voice-overs). He does so without any comprehension of how ridiculous the world he's in is, how much accidental damage he causes, or why there's always someone to pass him a fresh cup of coffee, even when he has a nearly full cup in his hand. Frank takes statements and questions literally, such as when, after showing up at the scene of a car wreck, his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) wonders about the state of the driver and asks, "Drunk?" Frank replies, "A little," before adding, "Just enough to wake me up." The rest of the main cast gets this method, too, from Hauser, to CCH Pounder as the police chief (who has a late, running gag about trying to not wake her husband), to Danny Huston as the tech mogul villain whose self-driving electric cars keep running down pedestrians, and to Pamela Anderson as Beth, the sister of the dead man from the car wreck. If Neeson's casting turns out to be a pleasant surprise, Anderson's performance here is a veritable revelation. A lot of overlooked, neglected, or typecast actors try to prove themselves by taking on a dramatic role in some gritty movie. Anderson just tried that, for example, but she displays more skill in this film than in probably any other thing she has done, because a performance in this kind of comedy has to appear effortless to succeed as well as hers does here. The plot doesn't matter (as an early throwaway joke about stealing a "P.L.O.T. Device" suggests), or at least, it shouldn't (as a lengthy explanation of what that device's acronym stands for and some other similar moments prove, by way of taking time away from the jokes). The jokes do, and they're constant and various in The Naked Gun—from puns so bad that they're groaningly good, to blink-and-they'll-be-missed sight gags, to elaborate and random setpieces, such as bodycam footage of Frank's misfortunes with chili dogs and a getaway at a mountain cabin that takes about three unexpected turns in the matter of a minute. That's the good stuff. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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