The Naked Gun: delightfully stupid cop caper resurrects the Hollywood comedy

For all the fun-starved viewers who’ve waited three decades for the return of the movie franchise born out of the short-lived TV police-procedural spoof Police Squad! (1982), it’s hard not to weep with gratitude at The Naked Gun. Its pleasures extend far beyond the sight of Liam Neeson submitting to humiliations that include his character Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.’s colon-roiling compulsion for eating chili dogs. (“I’m gonna ruin another suit!” he laments). 

The former star of Schinder’s List (1993) is determined to match Leslie Nielsen’s deadpan buffoonery, and his co-stars often match his bravura. Starring as Beth, the woman who captures Frank’s attention, Pamela Anderson goes above and beyond with a bout of jazz scat singing. Inheriting the part of Frank’s partner from the late, great George Kennedy, Paul Walter Hauser shows his mettle by dispatching a gaggle of violently deranged children. Even the post-credits punchline by “Weird Al” Yankovic – who provides a fan-pleasing bit of franchise continuity thanks to his cameos in the 1988 original and The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear (1991) – lands with a precision rarely seen outside of an Olympic gymnastics’ routine.

The intensity of responses to The Naked Gun may seem disproportionate for such an unabashedly idiotic effort. But that’s also due to the scarcity of wide releases for Hollywood comedies, a fact that The Naked Gun’s own marketers acknowledged when they implored ticket-buyers to “save comedy” by showing up for opening weekend. Along with the warm reception for Adam Sandler’s almost-as-belated Netflix sequel for Happy Gilmore (1996), the film’s respectable grosses thus far raise the hopes that its lowbrow kin will become less of a multiplex rarity. 

It’s unlikely any successor will be as carefully honed as Akiva Schaffer’s feature. At a tight 85-minutes, the film impresses as much for its concision as for its volume of gags. The occasional groaner barely has a chance to register since there’s always a better joke on its heels. Likewise, the story – in which Neeson’s hapless detective discovers a plot for world domination by tech visionary Richard Cane (Danny Huston) that involves inciting a Purge-like wave of mayhem – proves sturdy enough for the movie not to collapse into a smattering of disconnected bits. 

With Schaffer showing off the rigour he initially developed via Lonely Island’s many viral digital shorts, the pacing is also sufficiently brisk to compensate for scenes that may lack the anything-goes bravado that Abrahams and the Zuckers brought to the original Police Squad! and its first movie spinoff. Nor does Schaffer’s latest match the verve and inventiveness of his own Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022), a merciless skewering of Hollywood reboots that rates as the most anarchic Disney product of the modern era. 

Even so, if all The Naked Gun’s expertly executed gags and heroically numbskulled exchanges aren’t enough to save Hollywood comedy, then surely nothing can. 

► The Naked Gun is in UK cinemas now.