Relaunching a seminal spoof series in today’s environment is going to be a risk. I’ve discussed how comedy seems to have been relegated to TV and streaming in a post-COVID theatrical era, but there is still an immense appeal of watching something funny with a jovial audience. The Naked Gun series was a spoof on police procedurals with the indefatigable Leslie Neeson as the dumbest straight man to the absurdity of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker boys. This time it’s Liam Neeson as the lead but he’s thankfully keeping to the same spirit, playing the entire movie straight rather than being in on the joke, and it makes his performance that much more seriously funny. A scene where he and Danny Huston unexpectedly declare their irony-free love of The Black Eyes Peas made me laugh hard because of the sheer conviction of their performances. The intrinsic nature of spoofs is that they are uneven. It’s hit-or-miss but because the pacing is multiple jokes every minute, if one of the gags doesn’t make you smile, you only have to wait a short while for the next. I’d say my laugh percentage was about 20-33% of the jokes, which I think is a pretty solid batting average for yuks. Naturally, your mileage will vary. Neeson is terrific and so is Pamela Anderson as his co-star. She has a delightful impromptu scatting performance that is silly beyond words, which is a good overall description of the movie. I wish there were more visual gags and running gags (I enjoyed how frequently people discarded coffee cups for more coffee cups) to compensate for the heavy verbal whimsy, double entendres, and slapstick. There are some deranged sequences that go in directions I could not predict, like a holiday montage that gets freaky for several reasons. I wish the movie had more sustained sequences like this but I’m grateful we got as many as we did. It’s also a little weird that the villain’s plan is exactly the same as 2015’s Kingsman but nobody mentions this. Regardless, the new Naked Gun is refreshingly stupid and a good silly time at the movies.

Nate’s Grade: B