The Naked Gun (2025) Review

 

Alright, I've been waiting for this movie since the trailer dropped, then reviewed the first movie and its sequels. It's time to finally review the newest Naked Gun movie. Hopefully the long wait was worth it. 🤞

The Naked Gun (2025) is an action comedy movie. It's not only the fourth movie in the series but also serves as a legacy sequel. Production is done by Fuzzy Door Productions with Paramount Pictures distributing. Akiva Schaffer not only directed but wrote the screenplay alongside with Doug Mand and Dan Gregor.

The story is, Frank Drebin Jr. has just stopped a bank robbery and then gets a case of what appears to be a suicide. He soon realizes that the crimes are connected and suspects that tech giant millionaire Richard Cane is also involved. Now Frank Jr. must find out how all of the pieces fit together.

Initial Reaction

Years ago I discovered The Naked Gun films when Comedy Central played the movies  back when I was 7 or 8 years old. I thought they were very funny and even to this day still get a laugh out of them. So when I saw the trailer for this new one I was a little excited. I had my doubts, but still a little excited.

Cons

I've got nothing.

Middle Ground

The mix bag comes from the humor. Now the movie does embrace the franchise's absurdity, so thankfully that was still intact. However not every joke worked. Sometimes some joke or gag just didn't do it for me. But I would say about 97% of the time I was laughing and having a great time. Then there's the characters. While Frank Jr. and his love interest Beth Davenport are funny characters, others like Capt. Ed Hocken Jr. are alright. Yes I know that's a supporting character so I shouldn't have expected much, but so was George Kennedy's Ed Hocken. And I remember his Hocken was far better than Paul Walter Hauser's Hocken Jr.

Pros

One praise I'll give goes to Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. With Neeson I was surprised by his comedic chops. We did see a bit of that with his cameo in Ted 2 and playing a fictional version of himself in the Family Guy episode Fighting Irish. But with those he was playing the more stoic badass akin to his role in the Taken trilogy, here he's deadpan but playing more to a bumbling goof much like Leslie Nielsen before him. So it's refreshing to see him take out a full comedic role. And to my biggest surprise was Pamela Anderson. Yeah other than Scary Movie 3 and Superhero Movie, I haven't seen her in a lot acting roles, haven't even seen The Last Showgirl yet despite hearing many positive reviews. But despite those things she was really good. She was great with the comedy and surprisingly enough had good chemistry with Neeson. My last praise goes to the fact that we have yet another good parody film (the last one being 2022's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story). I was worried this would take the Disaster Movie direction and less of the original Naked Gun movie direction. Thankfully the filmmakers stayed faithful to the previous films that came before, and with that we got a pretty good movie out of it. And because of that I'm almost willing to forgive the more gray areas, almost.

While it does have problems, The Naked Gun (2025) is a great time to be had. It's got plenty of funny moments and is thankfully one of the better modern day parody films.

My final rating is, Good.

That's all for now. Come back on Monday, Aug 4th, for my review of The Bad Guys 2. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.