Movie Review - Paramount's The Naked Gun

Look out, crime. He's fully armed.

The Naked Gun is a 2025 action comedy film directed by Akiva Schaffer, written by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer, produced by Fuzzy Door Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. It is the fourth film in the Naked Gun franchise. It was preceded by Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.

"Frank Drebin, police squad. The new version." - Frank Drebin Jr.

Plot

Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr. is following in the footsteps of his father when a mysterious death leads him down a path to a dangerous conspiracy.

The Sweet

This movie was way better than it had any right to be.

I feel like comedy movies don't get big releases anymore. Oftentimes, because they are lower budget, they are just dumped onto streaming services and don't get any recognition. I honestly feel like comedy is a dying genre just because I could not tell you the last movie that made me consistently laugh.

That is, until yesterday.

I do enjoy the original Naked Gun. Leslie Nielsen is super funny, and it has that Airplane! dumb humor that is just so entertaining. But those movies feel very much like products of a bygone era of comedy. Every comedy movie is just trying to have clever one-liners and dumb situations. It has been a while since there's been this sort of outright, balls-to-the-walls, nothing is serious comedy movie. And it was so much fun.

The Naked Gun's nonsensical humor makes a staggering return that just caught me way off guard. Liam Neeson is the perfect person to step into Leslie Nielsen's shoes, but not for the same reason you'd expect. Nielsen was great at executing deadpan comedy. Neeson is not a comedic actor. He's often in these dumb action movies that all feel like the same thing. And that's why he's perfect. He plays this movie like he's starring in one of those action movies, but everything going on is just nonsensical comedy. He plays everything completely straight, and that makes him and the movie so much funnier.

I also love that this movie just hit you with non-stop gags and jokes. From the opening scene, I was cracking up. It does not take anything seriously. Any moments of "drama" are played entirely for laughs. And that was refreshing. It's nice to have a comedy movie that isn't concerned with the intricacies of trying to be a real movie. The Naked Gun wants to make you laugh, and it does that and then some.

One of the best things about this movie was its ability to have jokes beyond just one-liners. Visual gags feel like a lost element of comedy, but this movie excels in having them. The first scene literally shows a bank robbery with someone stealing something a piece of technology that is labeled "P.L.O.T. Device". Like, that's really, really funny, and there are so many instances of that. I just loved it's ability to be absolutely ridiculous in both the dialogue and what was going on on screen.

And, although the movie is "dumb" humor, the comedy is actually really smart. It's smart dumb humor. Things like the P.L.O.T. device are just really clever ways to take something that you expect is going to be serious (like a bank robbery) and give it a smart pun that makes you laugh. In the opening scene, the movie shows you that it's going to abandon all logic and just have ridiculous, laugh-out-loud gags regardless of whether or not they make sense.

I don't really have much else to praise about this movie, because it's exactly what you want from a comedy like this. It's not worried about characters or story or cinematography. It's goal is to be as funny and as overall entertaining as possible. And that is what it does, so I really liked this movie.

The Sour

To be honest, I don't have a ton negative to say here. Like, this isn't a movie that requires some sort of deep review. It's a really funny, entertaining film that will have you laughing throughout, and, at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

The one major thing that I didn't like was the villain. Now, again, this really didn't take away from the movie as a whole, but I just found that the villain was not as funny as the rest of the film. Danny Huston, the actor, often plays antagonists like this. He was in Wonder Woman as the fake Ares guy. I don't find him to be a particularly good actor, because he plays all of his roles very similarly, and this performance just didn't work for me. He's trying to do the Liam Neeson play-it-straight, but he's not as good of an actor nor is he as funny as Neeson. Part of that is also his character, who is played relatively straight without as much of the ridiculousness as Liam Neeson.

And, as with any comedy movie, there are jokes that don't land. When you take this many shots, not all of them are going to go in. That's just how it works. There are definitely a few gags that go on a bit too long. Some of the stuff with Pamela Anderson is especially dragged out. But these are minor complaints. I was laughing through, like, 90% of this movie.

Final Thoughts and Score

I'm 19 years old, so I haven't seen a lot of comedy movies in theaters. This is probably the funniest film I've ever seen in the theaters. This is basically the best possible version of this movie.

I am going Sweet here. Age range is 10+.

SWEET N' SOUR SCALE

Sweet (Great) Savory (Good) Sour (Bad) Moldy (Terrible)

"The Naked Gun"

Fun Factor: 9.5/10

Acting: 7.5/10

Story: 7/10

Characters: 7.5/10

Quality: 8/10

Directed by Akiva Schaffer

Rated PG-13 for moderate violence and action, language, suggestive material, thematic elements

Released on August 1, 2025

1 hour and 25 minutes

Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr.

Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport

Paul Walter Hauser as Ed Hocken Jr.

Danny Huston as Richard Cane

CCH Pounder as Chief Davis

Kevin Durand as Sig Gustafson

Liza Koshy as Detective Barnes