'The Naked Gun' Is the Unabashedly Silly Comedy We've Been Missing

A couple years ago, I wrote about the death of the theatrical comedy. While comedy had found its way into other genres like action and horror, a straight comedy became a rare thing to find in theaters, instead migrating to streaming platforms for various economic reasons. This is a shame because, like horror, comedy is more powerful with a crowd. It’s a shared experience, and there’s something weirdly empowering about laughing at the same joke with a room full of strangers. We all know comedies are good, and yet even Paramount decided to sell its reboot of The Naked Gun with a “PSA” acknowledging how a genre that used to be common in theaters is now an endangered species:

Thankfully, director and co-writer Akiva Schaffer does the genre proud with his new The Naked Gun, a legacyquel that honors the original not with loads of fan service or complicated lore but by being unable to go more than ten seconds without cracking a joke. The original film’s filmmakers, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrams, and David Zucker (affectionately abbreviated as “ZAZ” for their work), knew how to cram in as many jokes as possible into their comedies, and they didn’t feel constrained by plot, tone, setting, or style. If a sly piece of satire sits next to a fart joke, then so be it. The larger point was to get the laugh, and ZAZ delivered, which is why we can still quote films like Airplane! and the original Naked Gun today (“Hey! It’s Enrico Pallazzo!”).

Schaffer, a member of The Lonely Island and director behind other great comedies like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Hot Rod, does ZAZ proud with the relentless silliness of his new Naked Gun. In this new version, Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., who is his father’s son in being a completely deadpan buffoon. After getting kicked off a bank robbery case and onto collision detail, he investigates the mysterious death of a programmer working for Edentech, a Tesla/Amazon-like company run by the nefarious Richard Cane (Danny Huston). During the investigation, he teams up with the deceased programmer’s sister, Beth (Pamela Anderson), and the two start to fall for each other as they uncover Cane’s evil plot.

Of course, the movie knows that the story is the scaffolding upon which to hang as many gags as possible. The movie even opens with the bank robbers stealing the “P.L.O.T. Device” for those who may have wandered into the theater thinking this was an action film with some comic beats. The Naked Gun aspires to be as silly as possible, and it’s oddly liberating to watch a movie that has no higher goal than to make the audience laugh. No one here is trying to set up franchise mythology or overexplain a bit of exposition. Even the nods to the original movie are done well rather than overbearing, “We are also fans,” beats that directors attempt to shoehorn into their legacyquels.

The guiding principle here is to cram in the funniest jokes possible and then get out. At no point does the film seem satisfied with how many laughs it can get; it wants to speed to the next thing, which is a sharp move if you’re confident you’ve got the goods. By never lingering too long on a single gag, The Naked Gun makes a high percentage of its shots, and if a joke flops, it doesn’t matter because you know a good one will be along soon. There are a few scenes that build out the gag, and these were some of my favorite bits in the film (I’m not spoiling anything, so you’ll have to see for yourself), but even if those scenes don’t work for you, it’s all a relatively short film. At only 85 minutes (including credits, which, like the original trilogy, also has jokes), The Naked Gun isn’t here to belabor any single joke or plot point.

Schaffer and his co-writers, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (and I suspect some input from producer Seth MacFarlane), deserve credit for such a hilarious comedy, but you also have to give it up for Neeson, who does Leslie Nielsen proud with his comic performance. Part of Neeson’s success here is not only how game he is for every single joke, but that he now carries so much action hero baggage from the past two decades. Neeson plays Drebin like he’s still in Taken, Non-Stop, The Commuter, etc. The gravelly voice, steely eyes, and serious demeanor all work wonders in making the jokes even funnier. While co-stars Anderson and Huston do their best to keep up, I can’t think of an actor who would be as perfect for the lead role as Neeson, who knows how to make a meal between the juxtaposition of his serious exterior and the ridiculousness of comedy.

Whether audiences are ready to laugh in public again is another matter. The Naked Gun makes no pretensions about what it’s doing, and it’s up to audiences to decide if they’re excited for a goofy comedy that isn’t even R-rated like the genre’s most recent hits (“recent” being the mid-2010s). But the best the filmmakers can do is deliver on their promise, and The Naked Gun delivers. It is a movie that had me howling with laughter so often that by the end of the movie, I noticed that the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat (this probably doesn’t speak well of my physical fitness, but that’s a different story). Not every joke is meant to work for every single person, but as long as you have a sense of humor, The Naked Gun is the kind of comedy we’ve been without for far too long.

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