Movie review: ‘The Naked Gun’ (2025)

FloridaGator80
A promotional still photograph from the 2025 movie remake “The Naked Gun.”

I’ve never been a fan of remakes or “reboots” of films and certainly no fan of re-doing a movie that I’ve enjoyed many times over the years. Well, 2025 brought the “reboot” or, actually, an update on the sensational comedy “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad” from 1988 and starring that most wonderful comedic actor Leslie “Don’t Call Me Shirley” Nielsen. Well, the update just titled “The Naked Gun” stars Liam Neeson, but it isn’t even an indistinct shadow of the original. There have been solid-to-OK reboots, but you’ll have to overlook this pathetic effort.

‘The Naked Gun’
(2025; 85 minutes; rated PG-13; directed by Akiva Schaffer and starring Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser)

SOME ‘REBOOTS’ NEED TO GET THE BOOT

Maybe it’s because the original “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad” with Leslie Nielsen is so funny, so comedically perfect that I had trepidation as I started watching the reboot – or somewhat sequel – of the same name with Liam Neeson. It took me several sittings to get through it because an updated “The Naked Gun” exposes itself (pun intended) as mere tripe and a tough-watch in one sitting.

You’ll only find a smidgen of the creativity and comedy of the Zucker-Abrahams original with “The Naked Gun” from 2025 and you’ll find that Neeson has almost a funeral countenance both in delivery and appearance (he’s 73) and has nowhere the comedic delivery or comedic energy of original star Nielsen. Sadly, the new “Naked Gun” reeks and you’ve most likely have already smelled it.

Naturally, the new film has homages to the original, from the taxidermy beaver in one scene with no comment (in the original, Nielsen said to Priscilla Presley while apparently looking up her dress while she’s on a ladder, “Nice beaver!” and she hands it down to him) to family members looking at photos of their now-departed police fathers and a black character turning away from O.J. Simpson’s photo (of course, Simpson was in the original).

However, the vast majority of the jokes fall flat with the lone exception of Neeson welcoming Anderson into his office, gesturing for her to be seated and saying, “Please, take a chair” and her reply is, “No, I have enough chairs at home.” Bah dum dum! The best joke like so many machinegunned out in the original and the so few from this popgun of a reboot.

One running joke that had a chance until the filmmakers got their mitts on it was that Neeson as “Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.” and his sidekick Paul Walter Hauser as “Capt. Ed Hocken Jr.” get handed a cup of coffee at every turn, while discarding the ones already clutched in their hands.

You don’t really need to know anything about the plot (evil bad guy wants to take over the world with a mind-control device somewhat akin to what you might have seen in “Kingsman: The Secret Service” – click here to read my review), so lets move on to some of the primary cast …

  • An Oscar nominee and three-time Golden Globe nominee (not yet for this one), Neeson is simply a fish out of water in this one. His delivery of jokes is nowhere near the standard set by Nielsen in such films and tee-vee shows and he’s too old for the part at 72 (Nielsen was a decade younger doing the original). I’m not sure why he was cast, since it was obvious from the opening scene he wasn’t going to do a good job. Neeson was nominated for an Oscar and Globe for “Schindler’s List” and was nominated for Globes for “Michael Collins” and “Kinsey.” I liked him in a small, solid effort in the simply awful “A Prayer for the Dying” with Mickey Rourke (click here to read my review).
  • A two-time winner and two-time nominee for the worst-in-film awards called “The Razzies,” Anderson plays “Beth Davenport” and while I was initially going to be critical of her, she managed not to fumble the ball as much as Neeson. Since it wasn’t performing at the National Theatre in London, Anderson offered a smooth effort. She is best remembered for tee-vee’s “Baywatch” and was the initial “tool girl” on the popular series “Home Improvement” with Tim Allen. Anderson made an appearance in the reboot movie “Baywatch” (click here to read my review) and in a variety of other films. Both her wins and nominations for “worst” were for “Barb Wire” and “The Last Showgirl.”
  • A Golden Globe nominee (not for this one), Danny Huston plays bad guy “Richard Crane” and does a so-so job with a so-so character. I cannot imagine any other actor being better with this character and I’m sure better actors would have (or did) turn it down. Huston makes an attempt at energy for his character and that counts for something. Crane has been in films such as five-time Oscar winner “The Aviator” with Leonardo DiCaprio and the Oscar winning “The Constant Gardener” with Ralph Finnes and Rachel Weisz.
  • A Primetime Emmy winner, Hauser does the best job of replicating the “father” character from the original. As the son of George Kennedy’s original character, he is almost subtle in his physical mannerisms to stay close Kennedy’s countenance. I wouldn’t mind seeing Hauser in the future. He won his Emmy for the mini-series “Black Bird.” He was also the title character in Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” and he was in “Queenpins.”
  • A four-time Primetime Emmy nominee, CCH Pounder plays “Chief Davis” and she’s the aggressive face of the police department that wants “Drebin” and his team out. Thankfully, Pounder has a small part and, sadly, a running joke with her husband being asleep. Pounder has nothing to work with other than expressing frustration and anger – and she’s good with anger. Her nominations are for individual episodes from “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency,” “The Shield,” “ER” and “The X-Files.”

Other supporting actors’ efforts aren’t worth mentioning although there is one scene where officers are looking at their fathers’ photos on a wall for fallen cops, but Moses Jones as “Not Nordberg Jr.” just turns away from the picture of O.J. Simpson, who was a key actor in the original before he fell into the morass of murder and crime beginning six years after the original.

You have to blame producer Seth MacFarlane and director Akiva Schaffer for the obvious deficiencies in “The Naked Gun.” MacFarlane because it is his “project” and “vision” and he was originally set to direct it, but then Schaffer was called in and he proves to be completely inadequate to the task, especially since he co-wrote the simply awful screenplay.

MacFarlane has impeccable comedic credentials (“Family Guy,” “American Dad!” and films such as “A Million Ways to Die in the West”), but he can be uneven and somehow that trait comes out in this one. Schaffer, who has more directing credits for tee-vee and music videos than in film, is simply lost doing “The Naked Gun,” which is his only his fifth film of 65 credits as a director, after the first with “Hot Rod” from 2007.

Of course, with “The Naked Gun” being current flick, you have almost as long a list of “producers” and other executives as you do actors. Two people including MacFarlane are the “producer” – note, not co-producer because there are three of those; five executive producers; one associate producer; and one line producer. Well, when there’s this much money involved in a film’s production ($42 million) and a worldwide box office to date a $100+ million, a bunch of palms get stuck out to catch more than a little grease.

As of the original posting of this review (Jan. 6, 2026), “The Naked Gun” was ranked 39th at the U.S. box office for 2025 with $52.6 million in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. At No. 1 was “A Minecraft Movie” with $423.9 million; at No. 2 was Disney’s reboot of “Lilo & Stitch” with $423.7 million; and at No. 3 was the latest version of “Superman” with $354.1 million. The other films from 2025 that I’ve reviewed are:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Neeson’s full birth name is William John Neeson and he’s a native of Northern Ireland; Anderson’s middle name is Diane and she’s a native of Canada; Huston’s middle name is Sallis and he’s a native of Italy; and the initials in Pounder’s name stand for Carol Christine Hilaria.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Liam Neeson was 72 years old at the time of filming, five years older than Leslie Nielsen was at the time he made his final film appearance as Frank Drebin (aged 67 at the time he filmed Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)).”
  • BTW … Neeson is 6-foot-4, while Nielsen was 6-foot-2.
  • Like in an earlier movie in the franchise, the LAPD vehicles have “Warm and Serve” on the doors instead of “To Protect and Serve.”
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Pamela Anderson was offered the role of Tanya in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), but had to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts.”
  • Despite her history in entertainment, there were reports that Anderson’s first audition for a role was for this movie.
  • The film was mostly shot in the Atlanta area and the early scene at the vehicle “crash” was filmed at a quarry east of that city in Georgia.
  • In 2013, actor Ed Helms was set to do the “new” role of “Frank Drebin,” but the reboot wasn’t accomplished at that time.
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “Akiva Schaffer revealed why he wrote only one J. Simpson joke in the film, ‘To be honest, we never wrote another O.J. joke. We just went, ‘Yep, that takes care of that,’’ Schaffer says. ‘I didn’t know that the joke would kill as hard as it did at our first test screening. If I had known that, then maybe I would’ve written other jokes. But you want to be respectful of everything that revolves around him, so it’s not something I really took glee in. We just had to acknowledge it in a way we thought was not dancing on anybody’s misfortunes.’”

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