Film Review - The Naked Gun (2025)

The Naked Gun is a continuation of the classic comedy series from the late 80s/mid 90s and this time Liam Neeson takes over as Frank Drebin Jr, son of the late great Frank Drebin played by Leslie Nielsen, the story here concerns a tech mogul Nathan Cane (Danny Huston) who has sinister plans for the world and Drebin will have to have his wits about him to stop it.

The Naked Gun is a hard property to bring back as comedies on film don’t really exist as the force they once were (primarily thanks to a lot of bad parody films and the Judd Apatow Comedy Club where watching these films turned into an agonising evening of ad lib that isn’t funny) and also Leslie Nielsen was Frank Drebin which makes him nigh on impossible to replace.

Luckily this movie does him and the series proud as this was the most fun I have had in a cinema all year and first off the film is very very funny, like the earlier movies there are a lot of gags in the film in all corners of the frame, in the background, in the foreground and littered throughout almost every scene and a lot of them generate great laughs.

The other reason this movie works as well as it does is the cast, Neeson makes for a great replacement of Nielsen by essentially parodying his action man image and combining with his great sense of comic timing and like Nielsen before him he plays it straight down the line and it works wonderfully, Pamela Anderson fills the shoes of Priscilla Presley very well and has great chemistry with Neeson while Paul Walter Hauser makes for a good replacement of George Kennedy.

Where this movie also works is with its villain, Cane is definitely inspired by certain tech personalities but Huston does very well with the role much like Ricardo Montalban and Robert Goulet did with the first 2 films in the series and while he doesn’t get as many laughs as Neeson does he plays the straight man well.

And so that is the Naked Gun and it is great fun, tightly paced, full of good comedy, a good villain and Neeson doing Nielsen proud as Frank Drebin, can’t ask for anymore than that, 4 out of 5.