9 / 10
The Naked Gun is the spoof comedy franchise that defined what the genre could be at its highest level.
David Zucker directed the first three films and Akiva Schaffer directed the 2025 reboot. Leslie Nielsen plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin of Police Squad in the original trilogy, and Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in the 2025 film. The franchise grew out of Police Squad!, the 1982 ABC series canceled after six episodes despite critical praise, and the films carried its style to feature length.
The first film makes me laugh harder than almost any comedy I can name. Nielsen’s dead-straight face is the funniest thing in American movies as far as I’m concerned, and the jokes come so fast that I’m laughing at one while missing the next two. The sequels slide downhill and the third tests my patience, but the original deserves every bit of its 9.
The combined worldwide gross of the original trilogy is approximately three hundred and seventy million dollars. The 2025 reboot made approximately ninety-four million worldwide on a forty-two million budget, sufficient for the studio to consider further entries. The franchise’s reputation rests primarily on the original films, which represent the David Zucker-Jim Abrahams-Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) spoof comedy tradition at its most disciplined.
The ZAZ Tradition
David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker had made Airplane! (1980) and Top Secret! (1984) before the Police Squad! series.
Their approach to comedy was specific. The films layered visual gags, wordplay, and absurdist sight gags so densely that a single viewing couldn’t catch them all. Background details often contained jokes the foreground action ignored. Repeat viewings rewarded careful attention.
The most refined version of this technique shows up in The Naked Gun films. The jokes-per-minute ratio is unusually high, and the straight-faced delivery from Leslie Nielsen is essential. Nielsen had been a serious dramatic actor for thirty years before Airplane! turned his late career toward comedy.
He plays Drebin as a man who has no idea he’s in a comedy, and the absurdity around him works because he never plays it for laughs. I think his deadpan is the funniest acting in the whole spoof tradition, and nobody since has come close.
For Writers
Spoof comedy succeeds when the performers play the absurd material entirely straight. Leslie Nielsen never indicates that he knows the jokes are jokes. The audience laughs at Drebin’s complete unawareness of his situation. The lesson is that comedy reaches its peak when the comedian refuses to acknowledge that anything is funny. Indicating to the audience that you’re aware of the comedy invites them to evaluate the joke. Refusing to indicate forces them to commit to it themselves.
The Original Trilogy
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) is the strongest of the trilogy.
The cold open, in which Drebin singlehandedly attacks a meeting of America’s enemies (Khomeini, Arafat, Gorbachev, Castro, Qaddafi, Idi Amin), sets the tone, and I’d put it at the top of any list of comedy openings. The Queen Elizabeth assassination plot provides the spine, and the Reggie Jackson conditioning subplot supplies the climax. Every scene is dense with jokes, and the pace never relents.
The sequel, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), is nearly as strong.
The energy policy plot is sharper political satire than the franchise usually attempted. The hospital sequence is the strongest sustained gag in the trilogy. The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994) is the weakest. The franchise had begun running on diminished material. Some sequences still work. The Oscar ceremony parody is dated. The Pia Zadora gag holds up.
The hospital sequence in the second film has me laughing as hard as anything in the first, and I’m fond of the energy-policy satire too. The third film is where they lose me. Apart from the Pia Zadora gag, it feels like people repeating a formula they’d stopped enjoying.
For Writers
Dense comedic writing requires more labor per minute than other genres. The Naked Gun films pack jokes at a rate most comedies don’t attempt. The writers had to come up with three or four jokes for every joke that made it to screen. The lesson is that the apparent effortlessness of strong comedy is the result of disproportionate effort. The audience doesn’t see what was cut. They only see what worked. Plan to write significantly more than you can use.
The 2025 Reboot
In 2025, The Naked Gun cast Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s character. Akiva Schaffer directed. The film was developed for years before Schaffer signed on. The casting of Neeson was the central creative decision.
Neeson brought his late-career action persona to the role. That produced a different kind of comedy than Nielsen had produced. Neeson plays Drebin Jr. as a man with the Taken-era ferocity transposed onto the Police Squad universe.
The film mostly works. The script honors the original trilogy’s commitment to density, and some sequences are as strong as anything in the original films. Others reach for the joke instead of landing on it. Neeson’s glowering seriousness wins me over, and I think casting him was the smartest call the reboot made. It’s the strongest spoof comedy of its decade, but the bar in spoof comedy has been low since the original trilogy ended.
For Writers
A reboot of a comedy series can succeed if the new lead brings something the original didn’t. Liam Neeson brings a different specific energy to the template Leslie Nielsen made his own. The lesson is that legacy revivals shouldn’t attempt impersonation. The audience knows the original. The revival has to offer something different enough to justify its existence. Different specific qualities in the new lead is the easiest way to do this.
Craft Note
The Frank Drebin baseball-game sequence is the franchise’s joke-per-minute peak. The Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team stages sustained joke density (referee gags, anthem mishaps, batter ID, umpire mid-game review) through cutting patterns that let each joke register before the next arrives. Comedy can sustain density when the editing rhythm gives each gag room.
Is The Naked Gun as good as people say?
9/10 for the original. 8/10 for the second. 6/10 for the third. 7/10 for the 2025 reboot.
The average is roughly 8, but the 9 belongs to the first film, and that’s the one to watch first. To my mind it’s the funniest mainstream comedy of the 1980s and the high-water mark for the whole spoof tradition. The limp third film is the only thing that keeps me from loving the franchise as much as I prize that first one.
