Paramount‘s new iteration of The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the late Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin, and Pamela Anderson, is getting mostly positive reviews from critics ahead of its Friday theatrical release.
The fourth film in the franchise, coming more than 30 years after the last movie, 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, was directed by Akiva Schaffer, who wrote the screenplay with Dan Gregor and Doug Maud. Like the team behind the Nielsen-starring Naked Gun films, David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, Schaffer is part of a comedy trio, in this case The Lonely Island. Previous films in the series include 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and 1991’s The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear.
The new Naked Gun‘s cast also includes Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Schaffer’s Naked Gun is certified fresh with a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78 on Metacritic. The movie hits theaters on Friday.
Below, read key excerpts from critics as the first reviews of the movie roll in.
The Hollywood Reporter’s chief film critic David Rooney praises a surprisingly well-executed comedic performance from Neeson, who, like Nielsen before the original Naked Gun, had been an established drama actor. “The actor’s dead serious delivery provides a subtle meta underlay as Frank Jr. takes down bad guys and tackles a master criminal, starting with a bank robbery prologue whose funniest jokes are given away in the trailer,” he writes. Later, Rooney writes, “Luckily, Neeson and Anderson have enough spark to carry the film, not to mention great chemistry.” Ultimately, THR’s reviewer “kept wishing the movie were as consistently entertaining and as sure of its footing as Anderson and Neeson are in their roles. But even if the laughs are hit-or-miss and the plotting shaky, there’s enough inspired nonsense here to keep comedy-starved theatrical audiences engaged. To the filmmakers’ credit, that includes the kind of retrograde, politically incorrect humor — the cops’ anatomical appreciations of Beth are a hoot — that make the movie feel almost like the old Naked Gun.”
Vanity Fair’s chief critic Richard Lawson writes, “The greatest [jokes], though, rival the brilliance of the 1988 original. That masterpiece (yes) still prevails in any comparison, but the new version does much to honor its noble predecessor.” The reboot had Lawson laughing out loud and yearning for the revival of true comedy. He concludes, “Schaffer seems to have had the proper perspective on this reboot from its inception. That he loses his way here and there might merely be a sign that this particular comedy engine was always going to rattle a bit as it turned back on after so many years of neglect. Here’s hoping it starts purring smoothly soon enough.”
The Associated Press’ Jake Coyle writes, “Nielsen wasn’t just delivering a line with perfect deadpan. He was self-actualizing,” regarding the original. “You can’t say the same for Neeson in The Naked Gun. He’s plenty game; commitment isn’t the issue. But in this sometimes witty ode to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style of satire, the role never feels quite right for him, despite the phonetic connections,” Coyle writes. “But like most reboots, particularly comedy ones, the best thing about the new Naked Gun is that it might send you back to the original.”
For Vulture and New York Magazine, Bilge Ebiri wrote, “Like its previous iterations, The Naked Gun builds to a grand comic finale, though this one never quite achieves the climactic delirium of the original. (There can be only one Enrico Pallazzo.) But overall, what’s most surprising is how fully in tune the new film remains with the spirit of the earlier ones.”
On behalf of Rolling Stone, David Fear came in with a more harsh evaluation, writing, “Comedies are marathons, however, not just a series of sprints. Schaffer and his collaborators seem to sense that they can’t keep up the breakneck pace of the movie’s stellar first act for close to 90 minutes.”
Writing as film critic for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw puts it quite bluntly that “There is no reason for this new Naked Gun to exist other than the reason for the old ones: it’s a laugh, disposable, forgettable, enjoyable.”
The New York Post‘s Johnny Oleksinski, meanwhile, calls the film “the biggest surprise of the year.” He writes, “Someway, somehow, it’s the funniest movie to hit theaters in a long time. We’re talking gasping-for-air, ‘Get my inhaler!’ hilarious. In the spirit of the 1988 classic, director Akiva Schaffer’s movie carpet-bombs us with nonstop jokes — from stupid to clever to utterly deranged. They never, ever let up.”
