The Naked Gun (2025) is funny. Is that enough anymore?
It’s morning for Los Angeles Police Departments’ detectives. Grab yourself your cheap cop coffee, straighten your tie, and try to eat a chili dog without shitting your pants. Those directions are taken to heart by Liam Neeson and the rest of the Police Squad gang behind The Naked Gun (2025). This movie is a legacy sequel to the original Naked Gun, the beloved 80s comedy that spoofs the gritty cop genre. And Neeson, taking the reins from his sleuth predecessor Leslie Neilsen (hoping it was intentional that their names are so similar, that in of itself is pretty damn funny), delivers in all the ways one could ask for. Despite his stature as a serious actor, ol’ Liam is game for all the goofball-ery asked of him here. He runs into all kinds of trouble with the English language, misusing idioms and flubbing over compound words. He is a terrible driver, a horrific klutz, a detective who only succeeds after egregious failure. He makes an ass of himself for 85 minutes, and it’s glorious. It does justice to both the beloved original and its contemporaries, think Airplane or Spaceballs or Blazing Saddles. But the problem with those comparisons is that those movies are all decades old. And after an ultimately mild reception and box office draw, one has to wonder if this kind of performance and film is wanted anymore.
There is an endless stream of discourse around the death of the comedy movie (I hope you are still here, I know “endless stream of discourse” is the kind of thing that someone hears and wants to punch a hole in the wall). Journalists, critics, and comedians themselves all have theories as to why this is: a shifting market, the change in taste brought about by social media, and…uh, you know, whatever this means or doesn’t mean to you…cancel culture. These ideas certainly have weight to them, and, like any phenomenon this big, there really isn’t one answer. For my money, there are a few key shifts in societal temperament that have threatened the Naked Guns of the world; they fall under the umbrella of what I have dubbed “the Deadpool effect.” The name is, of course, based off of the masked vigilante brought to life by full time product hawker and part time actor Ryan Reynolds. It is his shtick, the 4th wall breaking/sarcastic commenting/always in control thing, that has become the norm across the board in Hollywood. Superhero movies of course come to mind with the Deadpool effect, like the fast talking boys of the Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers franchises. But so do current action movies; think The Fall Guy or F1. These movies are all perfectly enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but they are indicative of this effect. The protagonists are asked to be so clever, so self-aware. It’s not en vogue to just get on screen and do a song and dance; one has to have a “sigh…can you believe I’m doing a song and dance” energy to accompany it. The key consequence of this trend is that most movies today are a little funny, but not that funny. Liam Neeson’s Frank Dreben Jr. ignores all these rules in favor of old school lunacy. Much of the jokes rely on his cluelessness, like accidentally following a step-by-step manual on how to frame himself for murder, or losing his pants on live TV. He is not clever or self aware, but he takes the ridiculousness of the story (which centers around an evil billionaire trying to enact doomsday with his “P.L.O.T. Device) incredibly seriously. Those are prime conditions for pure comedy to soar! Soar like an eagle, or better yet soar like the owl that Frank Dreben believes is his father in disguise (you really gotta see that part to believe it).
I’ve diverged from my goal of praising a specific new film, but it’s hard not to get passionate about the disappearance of a genre that I love. It is a problem that has only gotten worse over time, not just cinematically but also culturally. We are all, in some ways, victims to the Deadpool effect. The age of the internet has made the average person more embarrassment wary, more captivated by appearing smart or worldly or self aware. And like the movies, I don’t know what the solution is, or if there is one at all. What I do know is that to tell sincere, straight-up, make-a-fool-of-yourself jokes is to put yourself out there in a unique way, and it is worth celebrating the rare 2025 example. So I really do appreciate The Naked Gun, chili dogs and all.
Charlie Boucher is a Senior Television & Digital Media major who misses the days when movies were really funny. They can be reached at cboucher@ithaca.edu