They don’t make them like that no more! And often with good reason, as comedy changes and the Naked Gun formula of the ’80s kind of ran its course.

Directed by Akiva Schaffer, and produced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, this goofy old-school film can be hit and miss with its endless, fast-paced gags. But there are plenty enough that are good fun to make it a good old fun time of it.

Plenty of Man’s Laughter in The Naked Gun

Liam Neeson had a late career switch to action films, peaking with the truly excellent The Grey (2011), although there were some stinkers in the mix.

But here, for the first time, he’s switched over into comedy. It’s the same career path Lesley Nielsen (1926-2010) had with the original Naked Gun series, having been a dramatic actor for most of his career. It worked with Nielsen who had a natural knack for it all as a bumbling fool.

And Neeson is also terrific, playing an incompetent halfwit of a cop who keeps making elementary errors with everything. Neeson really nails the deadpan, ultra-serious nature of the role.

Anyway, the plot is about Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson), the son of Lt. Frank Drebin (Liam Neeson). He works for the LAPD Police Squad and infuriates his boss Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) by being a bumbling idiot. He’s downgraded to traffic incidents, but then becomes embroiled in a fanciful plot where wealthy businessman Richard Cane (Danny Huston) plans to destroy society and go into hiding in fancy billionaire bunkers.

The plot is an excuse for Neeson to go off and be goofy.

To start off, there are some fun running gags we like, especially the one with never-ending coffee cups being swapped around at the most wildly inopportune and unlikely moments.

Plus, there’s the line of the film for us:

“It says you served 20 years for man’s laughter. Must have been quite the joke!”

A stupid pun on so many levels, but it did the job with us. And some of the humour is very stupid (scatological humour and all), but hey ho a lot of damn good fun, too. We feel it’s a time to be silly, what with all the serious in the world.

Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. eventually meets Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson in a later career resurgence of late) and the pair hit it off. All the while Drebin makes stupid errors, triggers off various hijinks, and all that jazz.

The plot is as predictably ridiculous as you’d expect, the key to The Naked Gun reboot’s success is with the daft humour.

Again, it can be a mixed bag. Some jokes are really from a different era and didn’t land with us well, but it moves at such a pace (and there are so many gags) we couldn’t help but enjoy it all. That “man’s laughter” line was worth it alone, said with the utmost stern conviction imaginable from Neeson.

Anyway, The Naked Gun reboot is a good old laugh. Yeah, it’s not perfect. Yes, it can be lowbrow. But its goofy sense of ridiculousness was a welcome retreat, supported by a surprisingly on-form cast.

The Production of The Naked Gun

The big surprise for the project was Liam Neeson’s involvement, but it makes sense now (having seen the film). He does the job perfectly and full credit to him. He’s said he went into it to play things seriously, not for laughs, and that did the trick.

Off its $42 million budget the film wasn’t a huge hit, making $102.1 million worldwide. Potentially enough to trigger a second outing, we’ll see.

The film was shot in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, across May and June 2024.

It received a mixed reaction from film critics. Our favourite (Dr. Mark Kermode) thought it was rubbish. The notorious contrarian Peter Bradshaw gave it 4/5. In the US, Hannah Flint writing for Time Out gave the thing a perfect score!

We do think it was destined for divisive status, as it is a very old school comedy. Some of the humour belongs in the ’80s/’90s and for us didn’t work. But other bits had us guffawing like idiots, so there we go.

Funnily enough, though, it isn’t a big awards contender. It’s just a daft comedy and, by heck, that’s kind of what the western world needs right now.