{"id":48652,"date":"2025-07-30T23:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48652\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T23:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:09:07","slug":"what-the-critics-are-saying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48652\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Critics Are Saying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tParamount<\/a>\u2018s new iteration of The Naked Gun<\/a>, starring Liam Neeson<\/a> as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the late Leslie Nielsen\u2019s Frank Drebin, and Pamela Anderson<\/a>, is getting mostly positive reviews from critics ahead of its Friday theatrical release.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fourth film in the franchise, coming more than 30 years after the last movie, 1994\u2019s Naked Gun 33 1\/3: The Final Insult, was directed by Akiva Schaffer, who wrote the screenplay with Dan Gregor and Doug Maud. Like the team behind the Nielsen-starring Naked Gun films, David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, Schaffer is part of a comedy trio, in this case The Lonely Island. Previous films in the series include 1988\u2019s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and 1991\u2019s The Naked Gun 2 1\/2: The Smell of Fear.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new Naked Gun\u2018s cast also includes Paul Walter Hauser<\/a>, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu and Danny Huston.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs of Wednesday afternoon, Schaffer\u2019s Naked Gun is certified fresh with a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78 on Metacritic. The movie hits theaters on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, read key excerpts from critics as the first reviews of the movie roll in.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter<\/a>\u2019s chief film critic David Rooney praises a surprisingly well-executed comedic performance from Neeson, who, like Nielsen before the original Naked Gun, had been an established drama actor. \u201cThe actor\u2019s dead serious delivery provides a subtle meta underlay as Frank Jr. takes down bad guys and tackles a master criminal, starting with a bank robbery prologue whose funniest jokes are given away in the trailer,\u201d he writes. Later, Rooney writes, \u201cLuckily, Neeson and Anderson have enough spark to carry the film, not to mention great chemistry.\u201d Ultimately, THR\u2019s reviewer \u201ckept wishing the movie were as consistently entertaining and as sure of its footing as Anderson and Neeson are in their roles. But even if the laughs are hit-or-miss and the plotting shaky, there\u2019s enough inspired nonsense here to keep comedy-starved theatrical audiences engaged. To the filmmakers\u2019 credit, that includes the kind of retrograde, politically incorrect humor \u2014 the cops\u2019 anatomical appreciations of Beth are a hoot \u2014 that make the movie feel almost like the old Naked Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVanity Fair<\/a>\u2019s chief critic Richard Lawson writes, \u201cThe greatest [jokes], though, rival the brilliance of the 1988 original. That masterpiece (yes) still prevails in any comparison, but the new version does much to honor its noble predecessor.\u201d The reboot had Lawson laughing out loud and yearning for the revival of true comedy. He concludes, \u201cSchaffer seems to have had the proper perspective on this reboot from its inception. That he loses his way here and there might merely be a sign that this particular comedy engine was always going to rattle a bit as it turned back on after so many years of neglect. Here\u2019s hoping it starts purring smoothly soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Associated Press<\/a>\u2019 Jake Coyle writes, \u201cNielsen wasn\u2019t just delivering a line with perfect deadpan. He was self-actualizing,\u201d regarding the original. \u201cYou can\u2019t say the same for Neeson in The Naked Gun. He\u2019s plenty game; commitment isn\u2019t the issue. But in this sometimes witty ode to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style of satire, the role never feels quite right for him, despite the phonetic connections,\u201d Coyle writes. \u201cBut like most reboots, particularly comedy ones, the best thing about the new Naked Gun is that it might send you back to the original.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Vulture<\/a> and New York Magazine, Bilge Ebiri wrote, \u201cLike its previous iterations,\u00a0The Naked Gun\u00a0builds to a grand comic finale, though this one never quite achieves the climactic delirium of the original. (There can be only one Enrico Pallazzo.) But overall, what\u2019s most surprising is how fully in tune the new film remains with the spirit of the earlier ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn behalf of Rolling Stone<\/a>, David Fear came in with a more harsh evaluation, writing, \u201cComedies are marathons, however, not just a series of sprints. Schaffer and his collaborators seem to sense that they can\u2019t keep up the breakneck pace of the movie\u2019s stellar first act for close to 90 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWriting as film critic for The Guardian<\/a>, Peter Bradshaw puts it quite bluntly that \u201cThere is no reason for this new Naked Gun to exist other than the reason for the old ones: it\u2019s a laugh, disposable, forgettable, enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York Post\u2018s<\/a> Johnny Oleksinski, meanwhile, calls the film \u201cthe biggest surprise of the year.\u201d He writes, \u201cSomeway, somehow, it\u2019s the funniest movie to hit theaters in a long time. We\u2019re talking gasping-for-air, \u2018Get my inhaler!\u2019 hilarious. In the spirit of the 1988 classic, director Akiva Schaffer\u2019s movie carpet-bombs us with nonstop jokes \u2014 from stupid to clever to utterly deranged. They never, ever let up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount\u2018s new iteration of The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,35374,206,35217,4208,21542,16491,37863],"class_list":{"0":"post-48652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-liam-neeson","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-pamela-anderson","12":"tag-paramount","13":"tag-paul-walter-hauser","14":"tag-the-naked-gun","15":"tag-what-the-critics-are-saying"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}