Review: 'The Naked Gun' reboot doesn't quite reach the wacky satirical heights of the original, but Pamela Anderson shows she's a great comic foil
Dang it, the reboot of “The Naked Gun” looked so good on paper — following up on a much-loved comedy franchise, casting a non-comedian with a tough-guy reputation like the first one did, and throwing everything to the wall to see what sticks. What could go wrong?
I’m afraid just enough goes wrong with the 2025 version of “The Naked Gun” — directed by Akiva Schaffer, who made the hilarious and smart boy-band mockumentary “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” — that it doesn’t achieve the comedy heights that the 1988 original did.
The movie follows Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), who introduces himself in his noir-style voiceover as both “sergeant” and “detective lieutenant.” No matter, he’s the toughest cop in Police Squad, the unit his late father — played in the original by the great Leslie Nielsen — worked in for years, solving cases almost by accident.
The younger Frank is more likely to fight than his dad, as Schaffer and co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand explore ways to satirize Neeson’s career as a hard-as-nails action star. It’s a move that doesn’t pay off as much as it should, in part because Neeson seems too in on the joke, not reaching the heights of obliviousness Nielsen achieved at his peak.
The story, like it matters, starts with a bank robbery that Frank breaks up — but not before a slick baddie, Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand), blows open a safe deposit box and takes a small electronic gadget, immediately identified as the P.L.O.T. Device.
The next day, Frank and his partner, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser, taking the role George Kennedy played in Nielsen’s films), check out a car crash that left a man dead — a case initially ruled as a suicide. But the dead man’s sister, Beth Davenport (played by Pamela Anderson), thinks her brother was murdered, possibly by his employer, the tech billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston). Frank pursues the case, and also pursues romance with Beth, an author who describes her work like this: “I write true-crime novels based on fictional cases that I make up.”
Some of the extended set pieces work better than others. A romantic montage in a snowy cabin becomes its own comedic and creepy short story, and may be the movie’s finest sequence. On the other hand, a bit where Sig is using infrared binoculars to spy on Frank and Beth is a gag that overstays its welcome. The movie’s brief running time — it clocks in under 90 minutes, including credits that are worth staying for — is dotted with instances where Schaffer and his team don’t know when to let a joke end.
The one person here who fully understands the assignment and nails every scene is Anderson. Anyone who survived five seasons of “Baywatch” must have a sense of humor, and here Anderson shows that she’s got strong comic chops and is willing to sacrifice her dignity for a good joke. If someone isn’t building a sitcom around her right now, they’re missing out on a golden opportunity.
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‘The Naked Gun’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, August 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for crude/sexual material, violence/bloody images and brief partial nudity. Running time: 85 minutes.