The Naked Gun (2025)

Director: Akiva Schaffer

Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston

Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Might have seen it in theaters, but time is finite, and certain movies only play at certain theaters. Such is life. Really looked forward to it showing up on Paramount +, though.

Yes, I am ashamed.

Did I Like It: Great comedies surprise you. So, maybe, The Naked Gun isn’t that great. I think any film that dusts off the now ancient joke of lowering a Spirit Halloween sign on a place recently closed is content with somewhat limited ambitions.

Truly awful comedies tend to give you all of their best bits in trailers and clips, hoping that they can paper over deficiencies in hopes of a better-than-expected opening weekend. The OJ joke? It’s there*. The bit with the chili dogs? Check. I even tripped over a clip of an truly odd sequence where Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson) is absolutely inconsolable after Beth (Anderson) accidentally re-connects his TiVo to the internet, thereby expiring a cache of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. I really would have like to come into that bit cold.

And yet, I kind of enjoyed it.

Maybe I was able to be aware that throughout the film I was laughing about as much as I did throughout any of the three Leslie Nielsen-starring original films. Judged by its own standards, this new Naked Gun doesn’t feel like an ill-considered notion, and it entertains plenty. That might have something to do with Neeson in the main role. Like the 1980s rehabilitation of Nielsen from respectable leading-man to the goofiest man who ever lived, bringing the late-stage Neeson action persona into a goofy comedy works. At some point, Ed Helms circled the leading role, and he would have been dreadful, coming originally from comedy as he did. One might yearn for a Jon Hamm, but we already know he’s funny. Let Neeson have his turn.

*Credit where credit is due that they didn’t keep going back to that well, and I might have forgiven them if they had.

Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan (2006)*

Director: Larry Charles

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Luenell, Pamela Anderson

Have I Seen it Before: Did anyone not see it in 2006?

Did I Like It: I mean, seriously? If you had any interest in watching this film, you’ve already seen it. If you actually understood it, you probably got a little sick of “my wife” pretty quickly. Plenty of people saw Borat as some kind of hero for their own dimly considered political incorrectness. It never seems to occur to these kinds of people that the butt of the joke is the American mindset in the first few years (at this point, it’s shaping up to be the first quarter) of the twenty-first century. These people didn’t watch the character duirng his early days on Da Ali G Show. I did. I got it. I think.

I was laughing so hard when I first saw this in the theater, that I honestly thought I’d pass out. Cohen is so profoundly committed to taking his various pranks through to their most absurd and uncomfortable ends, one initially laughs at a new situation, before wincing that no human should try these things, before howling with laughter once again that he is indeed taking it far past your wildest fears. Then, those aforementioned people came around and quoted it to death and ruined it for the rest of us. Same damn thing happened with Anchorman. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Ten-plus years later, the potency of some of the laughs may have subsided, but the audacity will never diminish. One marvels at the naked fight Borat (Cohen) and Bagatov (Davitian) have in the hotel. That one might have some kind of qualm about doing the things they do for a laugh. And just at the moment you think this is a certainly a committed performance in a controlled environment, civilians are brought into the process. Maybe they are hired extra and more of this is an illusion than it looks like at first blush, but they want us to believe in the moment that this is really happening, and it takes nearly fifteen years and enough distance to think that maybe it wasn’t.

I may be a little fearful as to what Cohen may have in store for us in the forthcoming sequel. If the audacity isn’t back during the second helping, then it will be a sad exercise, indeed. If the surprise of the laughter returns, then it may just be exactly what 2020 needs. And maybe everyone else won’t ruin it in the process.

*I’m a little distressed that I didn’t have to look up the full title of the movie.