MOVIE REVIEW – If your expectations are set somewhere between nostalgia and cautious optimism, the new “The Naked Gun” might deliver a few honest laughs. Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” and “American Dad” (and mastermind behind “Ted”), saw fit to resurrect the 1988 comedy classic, putting Liam Neeson in Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling shoes. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it misses by a mile.

Jerry and David Zucker, along with Jim Abrahams (collectively the ZAZ trio), set the bar impossibly high with “Airplane!” back in 1980, turning the ultra-serious Nielsen into a bona fide comedic legend. Their secret? Keep Nielsen deadly earnest while chaos erupts around him, with rapid-fire gags so relentless the audience barely has time to breathe. Fast forward to today: is there anyone left who can bring that much gravitas and comedic timing? Neeson as Nielsen’s successor? On paper, maybe. On screen… it’s complicated.

Bumbling Legacies and Awkward Family Ties

Neeson’s new lead plays the son of the legendary Lt. Frank Drebin, solemnly kneeling before his father’s portrait at police HQ—a tongue-in-cheek homage. His partner, Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser), pays tribute to his own dad’s photo, George Kennedy. And then, there’s that awkward moment with O.J. Simpson’s Nordberg—handled with a quick eyebrow raise and a silent headshake from Moses Jones (as Not Nordberg Jr.), and the gag is laid to rest in a blink. Onward to the next absurdity.

Director Akiva Schaffer and writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand leave subtlety at the door: Neeson flashes his legs (and backside), while his caffeine addiction becomes a running gag—coffee cups materialize out of nowhere, even thrust into his hands through car windows. A bank robbery devolves into a game of patty-cake, and the absurdity is dialed up to eleven. Sometimes it actually works.

Poultry Double Entendres, Pamela Anderson’s Jazz Diva, and a Zombie-Making Villain

The film’s requisite “blonde bombshell,” Pamela Anderson, takes over the Priscilla Presley mantle, trading risqué jokes with Neeson (especially during a scene involving turkey parts that has to be seen to be believed). She truly steals the show when she morphs into a jazz chanteuse for a bonkers scat solo. Danny Huston, meanwhile, brings slick villainy as the mastermind who turns the public into zombies via some gadgetry. Will Drebin Jr. save the day? The odds are as dicey as the jokes.

Gags come at a breakneck pace, but their quality is all over the map—so the laughs are, too. Below-the-belt humor dominates (Neeson’s bare butt makes several cameos), but there are flashes of brilliance, like the extended night-vision X-ray glasses bit that pushes the movie’s PG-13 to its limit. The biggest issue? Schaffer doesn’t know when to quit: coffee mug gags keep circling back until they lose steam entirely.

Neeson Isn’t Nielsen – and That’s the Missing Ingredient

Nielsen’s Drebin had a clueless innocence that made him both absurd and lovable; Neeson plays things deadpan, sometimes outright menacing, tearing arms off and using them as props—closer in spirit to Robert Stack’s stone-faced seriousness in “Airplane!” than the goofy warmth of Nielsen. For all the effort, this “Naked Gun” lacks the old-school magic that made the original soar.

– Gergely Herpai “BadSector” –