You can't fight city hall. No, it's a building.

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2025

#15 :  The Naked Gun

Easily the funniest — and, arguably, the riskiest — film of 2025, Akiva Schaffer's legacy spoof sequel/reboot lives or dies on Liam Neeson's ability to channel his inner Leslie Nielsen and play the straight man while delivering gag after gag at a rate of knots. Fortunately for us, Neeson is a bit of a deadpan comedy don (see also; Life's Too Short, Derry Girls) and, as Detective Frank Drebin Jr., he sets an exceptional standard of po-faced silliness that his co-stars handily match. Schaffer, too, shows he has a never-ending supply of so-dumb-it’s-smart and so-smart-it’s-dumb jokes on tap. At a moment where comedy's place in cinemas is being questioned, The Naked Gun — armed with infinite coffee cups, silly bits, and one mad snowman montage — makes one hell of a case for the communal chuckle's future.

I remember enjoying the original but I've got no idea what I'd think about it now. And I've no idea whether anyone needs a reboot of it. Well, let's be honest - I've a pretty good idea that no-one needs it, but it's more a case of whether I will I be able to tolerate it...

OK well - it was tolerable, but it was very unnecessary. I guess there is a plot to it but it makes very little sense and no-one would miss it if it wasn't there - because we're here for the jokes right? So are they any good?!?

Well, the good news is that some of them are - I had quite a few chuckles and even a few belly laughs (which is pretty rare for me watching a "comedy" film). However, a big part of that is that there are so many attempts at gags here that some of them have to land and some of them miss quite spectacularly - and there were probably plenty I didn't even notice as attempts. Yup, newsflash, kids - humour is subjective, so I'm not going to attempt to tell you how much you'll find funny but I'd be surprised if you didn't get a least a couple of laughs in the 85 minutes. Yes, I'm pleased to say they try not to outstay their welcome, although things do flag somewhat towards the end (I suspect this might be because they felt they should try to wrap up the story that no-one actually cared about).

Liam Neeson (who is surprisingly close phonetically to Leslie Nielsen) cannot be faulted for his dead-pan skills, but apart from that there's not a huge amount that he has to do. Somewhat surprisingly, Pamela Anderson actually has more acting to do (but not loads) and she does a perfectly competent job - I'm also going to call out Danny Huston for the good job he does hamming it up as the required baddie. Looking at the cast list on Wikipedia also brings up an interesting pop quiz question - which two "actors" have appeared in all four Naked Gun films? (and the Leslie Nielsen flashbacks in this don't count). 

Wikipedia also tells me that most of the reviews were very positive, although The Guardian makes the comment that "[Neeson] deadpans it impeccably, but perhaps doesn't quite have Nielsen's eerie innocence", which hits home for me - they still like it though, saying it's "amiably ridiculous, refreshingly shallow, entirely pointless and guilelessly crass". And yeah, I can't argue with any of those descriptions - whether you'll like it will very much depend on your ability to switch your brain off and just let the gags hit you. I can't say I loved it, but there were enough laughs in it to leave me thinking it wasn't a complete waste of my time - I'm quite tempted to rewatch the original to see both how it compares with this and what I think of it now.

And the two "actors" who have appeared in all four films are Priscilla Presley and Weird Al Yankovic - I suspect one of those would be easier to guess than the other for most people. 

#16 - An enjoyable spy caper