Writing about counterfeits is in the same way as dancing about architecture: Film Critics almost never get paid to do so. In fact, Akiva Schaffers ”The naked gun“May be the first theatrically distributed film of its kind because they like” they come toether “(2014),” Fifty Shades of Black “(2016) and”Bohemian Rhapsodi“(2018), all of which already felt like relics from a time when the audience was used to such a cheerful absurd gag-a-Thons-an time when men were men, women were women and oj Simpson was a Scandinavian detective named Nordberg.
We previously lived in a country where comedy was a whole genre for itself, as opposed to a short distraction like a squinty-eyes Chris Pratt Tried in vain to search for action scenes. But good news! Just like open political bribery and a monopolistic control over the entertainment industry, Paramount is taking a bold step towards making theater comedies viable again.
And while the prospect of reviving a COP broadcast as “The naked gun“Maybe seems to be smack of the same reactionary conservatism that has stimmed the rest of the US’s latest comeback stories (eg measles, coal mines, McDonald’s Snack Wrap), Schaffer’s version manages to capture the classic Spoof magic without turning back.
Here is a comedy that pines for how things were without sacrificing any of the progress we have made to get them back. A comedy that constantly uses the real world to set up its jokes, but who rarely rely on it to deliver its punchlines – and tends to land some incredible hawkers when it does. A comedy that refers to everything from Elon Musk to racially motivated police violence without letting its virtues get in the way of its laughter, and even trotting out the R-word that has the power to make activists and Edgelord’s both cackle on the same joke (although Elon-Stand-In is clearly intended to be the butt). Although that choice may sound like the symptom of a Feckless movie that is afraid to promote part of its audience, in context, it shows how brilliantly this “naked gun” navigates the difference between timeless stupidity and retrograde madness.
And boy oh boy, it is twisting the first of these things. Just to get it out of the way: “The Naked Gun” is Almost Objectively the Funniest Movie of the Year – Not because humor will hit every audience as hard as it did mine (I don’t think wolf i’ve the wolf Street ”), but Rather because nothing else has aimed for even a fraction of the same laugs. Other 2025 movies have jokes; this is Jokes (even with the title card is a fantastic goof), and most of these jokes are really, really, really Damn fun.
Even those who do not have the advantage of being delivered by Liam Neesonwhich brilliantly undermines his late career screen as a vigilante outside team-and visits the gravelly deadpan he brought to his two-face legislature in “The Lego Movie”-for an inspired comic performance worth the Dreebin family name. Grizzled and angry where his police group Dad (Leslie Nielsen) was Daft and with the title, is Lt Frank Drebin Jr. A widow copper struggling to play according to the rules in a new era of police responsibility.
Frank longs for the days when a mark for a middle -aged white man to play God; The days when police did not have to pretend there were consequences to shoot people, and there were no bodycam pictures of him who used his gun to cut the bathroom line in a cafe. It’s like Frank’s world stopped moving forward when his wife died (he still uses a Tivo), and now he just does what he can to keep it on its shoulder. And also drinks a lot of coffee. So much coffee. A fresh cup is handed over to him from the screen in virtually all other scenes.
In addition, this succession follows the same old story as David Zucker’s first “The Naked Gun” movie. Not in “Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blush accident over the orange bowl on New Year’s day” influence.
The new bomb shell is a blonde called Beth (Pamela Anderson, who pays delightful tribute to Priscilla Presley), and her brother has just been found dead in his Don’t call it a Tesla at the bottom of a lake. All signs point back to his trillion manager Richard Cane (Danny Huston, over time in his life), whose electric car revolution secretly finances a much more unfortunate plan. A plan like just Beth, Frank, and his partner captained Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser, who gives a wonderful straight man as the son of George Kennedy’s character) has the power to stop before threatening to tear an irreversible hole in the heart of the social fabric. Absurdity follows.
With the risk of exaggerating the socio-political relevance of a movie where the craftsmen are patiently awaiting in a one-file line while a “customers are served” scoreboard keeps track of those that Frank already has a karate choped in the neck, so that ridicule finds a new purchase in a world that no longer makes a lick of fucking. By recognizing that the audience is more founded than ever to laugh by the type of straight face absurdity that surrender itself as serious, Schaffer and his co-author Dan Gregor and Doug simply give it the experts of us permission to do it again.
This “naked gun” does not teach people to look at it, bend backwards and try to keep up with the times (post-zaz reference points such as “mission: impossible-fall” is introduced either with almost miracular elegance or used to make Frank appear as a vibrant anachronism), or Belabor’s need for his own existence in an exceed Firstly, Movie critics are happy to do that for them. For another, to overplay this succession as a kind of corrective would basically contradict ethos in a film about the dangers to live earlier. “The Naked Gun” does not say that we have to go back as much as it does a case to control ourselves as the world lurks forward.
Some things are too important to leave behind – such as the perception that stupidity can be a beautiful force for good and not just an infinite fuel supply for evil. Like all really good movies (“Tokyo story”, “How green was my valley”, “Saving Silverman”, et al.), “The Naked Gun” was barely a minute old before it made me shake my head and mumble “So stupid” for myself with a huge grin in my face. Of course, some of the jokes fall flat, and several of the best from trailers and TV places are not in the 80-minute’s final cut at all (which, along with the dazzling absence of Nordberg’s son, is enough to suggest the possibility of a “wake up, Ron Burgogne”-style alternative version), but the gags fly on you so fast to and one to and one.
And while I wish that the whole thing could have been even tighter with thrown sieve and the Limal ADR sounds, Schaffer compensates for his relative experience of pure fakes-which requires a slightly different comic muscle than the one he worked on a more character-driven mockumer as “popstar: never to stop” You see a riff on the series’ classic Love Montage Spiral to “Too Many Chefs” -Sque Delirium. Another, equally magnificent sequence is based on a little worthy louvre when Frank tries to escape an electric car before it drives him into the sea. The part with the Handel Kevin Durand and the thermal glasses? It should be too familiar to crush as it does, but sometimes a good dog is everything you need to inhale a new life in a classic.
Although it is a mild shame “The Naked Gun” Peters out a little towards the end (at least before he recovers under the credit), it is even more a shame that it must end at all. Inviting people to laugh with their heads together in public is one of the biggest and most galvanizing things that the movies have the power to do, and watching this one in a packed multiplex just a few days after sitting through “Happy Gilmore 2” in silence on the sofa at home should be enough to convince someone that it is a crime for studios to go straight to go straight to go straight to go straight for studios. Lucky for us, Lt Frank Drebin Jr. is extremely in the case.
Rating: B+
Paramount Pictures release “The Naked Gun” in theaters Friday 1 August
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