August 13, 2025
Sergeant Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) was a Detective Lieutenant of Police Squad, a special division of the LAPD. The day after he stopped a gang of bank robbers while disguised as a schoolgirl, his chief (CCH Pounder) reassigned him and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) to the case of a crashed Edentech electric car in Malibu that claimed the life of software engineer Simon Davenport.
Drebin received a visit from Simon's sexy sister Beth (Pamela Anderson), who was a writer of true-crime stories based on fictional stories she made up. She believed that Simon's boss Edentech owner Richard Cane (Danny Huston) was involved in her brother's death. While questioning a bank robbers, Drebin discovered that the safety deposit box stolen in the robbery also belonged to Simon Davenport.
This current incarnation of "The Naked Gun" is a reboot of a trilogy of "The Naked Gun" films released in 1988, 1991 and 1994, starring Leslie Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin. The first two of these films were directed and co-written by David Zucker. The character of Drebin actually made its debut earlier in a short-lived 1982 television series entitled "Police Squad," co-created and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker.
This present film also used the same silly slapstick comedy style that "Police Squad" and the original "The Naked Gun" films were known for. Aside from outrageous sight gags (like those of Drebin and Beth in the kitchen as seen through infrared glasses), the script was chock-full of naughty or dry jokes of various degrees of cleverness (like how Drebin pronounced the word "manslaughter" or how some lines frustratingly wound up as non-sequiturs).
Seeing 73-year old Liam Neeson as Detective Drebin Jr. is already comedy enough in its anachronistic senselessness in relation to the original films. Ever since "Taken" (2008), Neeson has been in several dead serious action B-movies. So seeing deadpan Neeson here in idiotic scenes wearing a short schoolgirl skirt with underpants showing or getting caught upside down with his pants pulled off, will make even the toughest nut chuckle.
Pamela Anderson played a perfect femme fatale as the elegant but clumsy Beth Davenport. Her comic chemistry with Neeson was electric (although that animated snowman bit did not exactly fly), and she even had a surprising jazz scatting song number. Hauser's character was the son of George Kennedy's character, but he was underused here. Weird Al Yankovic has his fourth cameo in four films. Great to see Priscilla Presley in a cameo, but it was too short. 7/10
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