This might be a shocking thing to hear in 2025, but Hollywood has just released another legacy sequel to an ’80s franchise. This time they’ve set their sights on comedy classic The Naked Gun.

The reboot stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s character from the original movies, alongside a cast including Pamela Anderson, Robert Duvall, and Danny Huston.

Like the rest of these movies, there’s not much in the way of a plot. There’s a bad guy (Huston) who runs a tech company and has a MacGuffin device that will turn people back to their primal state. When a guy shows up dead, Frank Jr. is put on the case and soon ends up on the trail of the killer. Cue jokes.

Was I excited for this movie? No. I thought it was just another desperate attempt to reboot an old franchise rather than create something new, serving Hollywood’s need for nostalgia. Add to that a trailer that was a bit underwhelming and you have a movie I wasn’t feeling the hype for.

But still, there’s always a chance that you’ll be surprised, and so I was, in a good way.

The biggest selling point for me was Liam Neeson. I’ll watch anything he’s in, particularly his late career in action movies, no matter the quality. The fact he was playing Frank Jr. was enough for me to get my ticket and get to the theatre.

It turns out he was just the man for the job. Neeson is excellent in the role. He has a natural talent for comedy, and one that suits this kind of movie, delivering his lines in a straight-faced way, without any mugging to the camera or overacting just because it’s a comedy film. He nails the role down perfect, with excellent timing.

For the most part he’s well supported with jokes too. There are a lot of gags in here. Probably not as many as the original movies, and not all of them work, but there are still plenty of good ones. A lot are easy picking but there are some that make you do a double take to realise just how smart they are, and I’m sure there are plenty of them I missed on first viewing.

He’s backed by a good cast, matching perfectly with Pamela Anderson as his love interest. Every scene between them is excellent. You can also see some slight connection to his action career too. Not so direct as to mention his “particular set of skills” or anything, but it seems to be more centered around fight scenes than the ’80s films.

One thing noticeably absent is the constant callbacks to the previous movies. There are a few, mostly to do with him being Frank Drebin’s son, but there aren’t the kind of nostalgia boxes that pack out films like Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It manages to stand on its own without needing to remind you of its heritage.

In fact, you could question why it’s part of the Naked Gun franchise at all. Apart from the obvious appeal of tying-in with a successful IP, I think the main reason is that it gives them license to use the same kind of comedy without being labelled a rip-off.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It doesn’t have the same rate of laughs as the OG film, which fired them off from a fully automatic gag rifle, and there are some places where it begins to lag a bit, rather than racing along at 100MPH. But it’s still fun, funny, and a film you can just enjoy. It’s a rare thing for legacy sequels, but it manages to both stand as its own movie while not damaging the reputation of the originals that it owes its existence to.

My only worry is how many more ’80s comedies will be revived and remade as a result? But that’s not to be blamed on this movie. Despite my initial reservations, The Naked Gun turned out to be quite the joke!