The Naked Gun, directed by Akiva Schaffer, is in cinemas now.
Can they really pull off another Naked Gun 37 years after Leslie Nielsen’s career-defining turn as the bumbling detective in the original cop-show spoof trilogy?
With Liam Neeson – whose own name bears a curious resemblance to his predecessor – playing Lt Frank Drebin Jr and sending up his own filmography in a lovingly crafted tribute-cum-sequel, the answer is a resounding “Yes”.
Right from the opening, with its spot-on pastiche of The Dark Knight’s bank robbery scene, it seems Neeson is not afraid to take the mickey out of himself and his run of earnestly violent action movies.
As Drebin Jr polices alongside the other sons of 1988’s original police squad, he meets Pamela Anderson’s Beth Davenport, whose brother has died in suspicious circumstances. Meanwhile, villain Richard Cane (Danny Huston) steals a gadget called a P.L.O.T. device, setting off a train of events that pales into insignificance because, really, it’s all just a vehicle for the movie’s hearty laughs and happy reminders of the silly comedies of yesteryear.
From the Mission: Impossible opening credits to the myriad visual gags, there are nice callbacks to the original: “May I speak freely?” “I’d prefer English,” and so on. Drebin and Davenport engage in some wonderfully absurd “sexy talk”, and there are nods to 20th-century pop culture which a middle-aged audience will appreciate. The obligatory falling-in-love montage, to the soundtrack of Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, is both hilarious and genuinely uplifting.
Anderson, whose own film career is enjoying a renaissance, is to Neeson what the original Naked Gun’s Priscilla Presley was to Nielsen – but this time it seems the on-screen couple have also been making eyes at each other off screen. The press tour for Naked Gun 2025 is causing joy for fans as Anderson and Neeson speak freely of their mutual admiration and affection.
Now 73, making him roughly 10 years older than when Nielsen started his run, Neeson has had some small comedy roles over the years. Memorably in 2011, he appeared as himself on the Ricky Gervais showbiz mockumentary Life’s Too Short, trying to convince Gervais and Stephen Merchant that comedy was his true calling. It appears he was right all along.
Rating out of five: ★★★★
