David Zucker isn’t exactly giving the Naked Gun reboot a thumbs-up. Speaking with Woman’s World, he doubled down on his disappointment, claiming the new film tried to capture his trademark style but missed the mark entirely.
“My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style — and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently,” he said. “People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.“
Zucker also points out that big budgets have no place in comedy. “You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz,” he said. “Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.“
The budget for the Naked Gun reboot was reportedly around $42 million. The original had a budget of $14.5 million in 1988, which comes to around $38 million in 2025 dollars. Not too much difference. “Everybody’s in it for the money now, and that feels like the only reason why they wanted to do a new Naked Gun,” Zucker said.
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The last time Zucker commented on the reboot, he said he wouldn’t be watching it. “I’m not gonna see it, but I don’t see any of the sequels that were of my material done by other people, and that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve told Akiva that I have no intention to see it. He actually invited me to come see an early cut of it, but I told him there’s nothing I could do to help because it really isn’t what I would have done. That’s not to say that he didn’t actually end up doing a good movie. But I don’t think I could help with that.“
Our own Chris Bumbray said he had more fun watching The Naked Gun than anything in a long time. “Some might say The Naked Gun is stupid — and that’s exactly the point,” he wrote. “It’s stupid like a fox, and also really funny. It’s probably the best movie of its kind since Hot Shots: Part Deux, and honestly, I think I laughed more at this than I did watching The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
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