{"id":10042121,"date":"2025-08-01T13:59:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10042121"},"modified":"2025-08-04T04:33:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T08:33:27","slug":"the-naked-gun-review-the-funniest-85-minutes-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/08\/01\/the-naked-gun-review-the-funniest-85-minutes-of-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The Naked Gun&#8217; Review: The funniest 85 minutes of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Since there are few things worse than reading a film critic describe jokes from a hilarious movie in ways that strip them of their entertainment value, I\u2019ll keep this review nice, brief, and summary-free: Akiva Schaffer\u2019s <strong><em>The Naked Gun<\/em><\/strong> is one of the best revivals of a comedy franchise in recent memory. It\u2019s a tribute to the sturdiness of the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker joke-a-second model and the enduring appeal of the ludicrous deadpan delivered by formerly straight-laced acting talent. If the Friedberg-Seltzer crew hadn\u2019t tanked the format by association with all of the <em>Scary\/Disaster\/Superhero<\/em> <em>Movie<\/em>s (and I\u2019ll be real with you: once Zucker started directing the <em>Scary Movie <\/em>sequels, they got legitimately funny \u2014 for at least one installment), we might still regularly see these kinds of features on the big screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Comedy, it seems, is either meant for streaming or as a pulpit for the kind of hoary moralizing usually reserved for <em>Love Is\u2026 <\/em>newspaper comics. You know, the Judd Apatow \u201cHaving children and popping boner pills doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t commit minor felonies with the boys on the weekends! You\u2019re still young (at heart!)\u201d shit. The primary animus for most modern comedic filmmaking comes from anxiety and insecurity, at least when it\u2019s not accompanied by a more-obvious genre-chaser (horror, for example), and I guess you can attribute that to the silver-screen comedian\u2019s desire to be taken seriously. This is why Adam Sandler went to Netflix \u2013 he can be funny there, and appear on the big screen for a challenge in a Safdies feature \u2014 and it\u2019s why great comedy has a home on social media platforms, where the stakes are so low to be inconsequential. The business of comedy is too big to be funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the words \u201canxiety\u201d and \u201cinsecurity\u201d have never described Schaffer\u2019s career as a filmmaker. He makes broad, goofy, exceptionally funny features \u2014 <em>Hot Rod<\/em>, <em>Popstar<\/em>, that <em>Chip \u2018n Dale<\/em> reboot that surprised the hell out of everyone a few years ago when it hit Disney+ \u2014 and he\u2019s an extraordinarily skilled gag writer. After all, one doesn\u2019t spend twenty years as a key part of the Lonely Island crew if they can\u2019t nail a joke. Along with co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, he seamlessly makes the transition from the heyday of Leslie Nielsen and George Kennedy to the modern era of Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. He does so without being overly reverential (though there are some reconstituted and updated gags from the prior installments) while avoiding the pitfalls of a full-on \u201creboot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Schaffer never pauses for a laugh or winks and nods at you to chuckle: To do so would cause a jam in the chamber, and the whole automatic-fire operation might blow up in his face. If a gag misses, there\u2019s plenty more in the magazine, but his accuracy is genuinely astounding. If he were target shooting, you\u2019d see some scattered bullet holes around the edges, but you\u2019d likely notice the fact that the head is missing. Seriously, there is something here for everyone, provided one enjoys the feeling of laughing in a darkened, crowded theater as opposed to the smirk that comes with a latter-season Arrested Development episode. There are goofy puns, groan-worthy innuendos, expertly-crafted punchlines, sight gags, pratfalls, and absurdist flights of fancy, all delivered without a hint of pretension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet Schaffer wouldn\u2019t be able to make the film work without his leads, as Neeson and Anderson are a genuinely brilliant combination on screen. He\u2019s always been (secretly) very funny, and his career arc has bent in stranger ways \u2013 had you asked someone about the guy from <em>Michael Collins<\/em> robing up for a <em>Star War<\/em>, they would have looked at you crazy, much less figured he\u2019d go on to become the patron saint of the B-action movie. Neeson is effortlessly funny, which means it requires a <em>ton<\/em> of work on his part, as he somehow manages to get through the lines he\u2019s given without breaking. A favorite quote: \u201cLike an idiot\u2019s completed jigsaw puzzle, I was framed.\u201d He\u2019s just so game for everything that Schaffer throws at him, but, like Nielsen, he never ever suggests that he\u2019s in on the joke. After all, he is the goddamn joke, and he\u2019s one of the main reasons you\u2019re here to laugh. What\u2019s better is how beautifully he\u2019s paired with Anderson, who is riding a career renaissance after unfairly spending two decades as a punchline. Everything critics hated about her work in the past is an asset here (and yes, I\u2019ll come out and say that <em>Barb Wire<\/em> is the funniest possible <em>Casablanca<\/em> remake), and might even suggest to them that, god forbid, some of her work in her prior movies might have been\u2026 intentional? Her comedic timing is incredible, her commitment to the bit rivals Neeson\u2019s, and they make such a charming pair on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there were justice for comedic performers in the awards scene, they\u2019d both get Oscars. Yet such are the pitfalls of being the leads in a volley against those who\u2019d scoff at either of them outside of these confines. For all of our era\u2019s flippancy and \u201cwitty bants,\u201d we are plagued by seriousness: The Jack Kirby panels brought to life are drained of their stylized poetry, the children\u2019s story we adapt sapped of their whimsy, the comedies fables that Aesop might have spun for 40 year-olds who can\u2019t seem to stop using the world \u201cadulting\u201d in polite conversation. As such, we\u2019ve stopped being able to identify seriousness when it matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Naked Gun <\/em>is seriously devoted to making you laugh so hard that you think you might join Chrysippus of Soli in the \u201cdied from laughter\u201d circle of hell, and it goes about its task with ruthless efficiency. It\u2019s 85 minutes of pure bliss, which frequently had me laughing so hard I thought I\u2019d never get another breath in edgewise. So, yeah, Leslie Nielsen can rest easy \u2013 Frank Drebin Jr. can fill the shoes and pick up the slack, hopefully for ten more of these. Bring on the sequels. Please. <em>Please<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since there are few things worse than reading a film critic describe jokes from a hilarious movie in ways that strip them of their entertainment value, I\u2019ll keep this review nice, brief, and summary-free: Akiva Schaffer\u2019s The Naked Gun is one of the best revivals of a comedy franchise in recent memory. It\u2019s a tribute to the sturdiness of the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker joke-a-second model and the enduring appeal of the ludicrous deadpan delivered by formerly straight-laced acting talent. If the Friedberg-Seltzer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10042123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[27863,9415,24029,35824,26409,35825,12316,35823],"class_list":["post-10042121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-comedy-movies-2","tag-film-reviews","tag-good-movies","tag-gut-busters","tag-header","tag-holy-shit-this-is-funny","tag-liam-neeson","tag-the-naked-gun"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;The Naked Gun&#039; Review: The funniest 85 minutes of 2025<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It was a hard competition between &#039;The Naked Gun&#039; 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