The Naked Gun (2025)

The Naked Gun reboot is set during the holidays (mainly New Year's Eve) as a thematic anchor exploring the ways recurrent franchise media intersects with primal, underlying concepts linked to the changing of the calendar, and moreover I am very clearly fucking with you, and in actuality the setting of this movie - to the very limited extent its virtually non-existent continuity permits any kind of temporal setting to be established - is most likely just an excuse to make a visual joke comparing New Year's balls with testicles.

Still, it is set just before New Year's, which means it qualifies as a "Christmas movie" albeit on the loosest technicality possible and therefore should be discussed on this site. Also, I'm forced to admit that setting your film around the holidays just to make a joke about balls is - again, on a technicality - a fairly novel justification for the timing, whether I like the joke in question or not.

In that particular case... the answer is "not," incidentally, though most of the movie's gags amused me enough I had a good time overall. For both better and worse, this is faithful to the original series and movies' formula, in which a constant barrage of jokes takes priority over all else. This is pure parody, and by design has minimal interest in plot, character, theme, or anything else. Well, mostly.

Somewhat surprisingly, the remake does invest a little effort in theme, adding some pointed digs at billionaires, the tech industry, and police brutality. None of this is all that complex or intelligent, but the movie is written from a left-leaning perspective, which I appreciated. It could have said a lot more (particularly as far as police brutality is concerned), but considering the source material (to say nothing of the political leanings of the director of the earlier films, who was wisely excluded this time), I appreciate that this was at least trying to take a stand.

The plot of this movie... does not matter. Like at all. It's starring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin, Jr., which is fun choice for a number of reasons (including Neeson's name's similarity to that of Leslie Nielsen's). Neeson does solid work playing what amounts to a parody of his usual roles. If anything, he's a bit old for the part, which could create issues if they're serious about producing sequels.

Pamela Anderson plays Beth, a love interest trying to take revenge against Richard, an Elon Musk analog played by Danny Huston. Both Anderson and Huston do good work, but the movie mainly hinges on Neeson's ability to sell the jokes (which, again, he does).

The plot, which still doesn't matter, largely concerns a plot device (helpfully labeled as such) which functions... basically the same way the plot device in the first Kingsman movie worked? Which is to say it turns everyone in the vicinity into mindless killers programmed to attack each other and eventually thin out the human race. It's actually weird they just kind of lifted this from Kingsman, honestly. It's so similar it almost feels like it must be a reference or attempt at parody, but Kingsman was already parody, so I've got no idea what they were thinking.

Again, none of that matters, because the storyline is just there to carry joke after joke, the majority of which land somewhere between "light chuckle" and "absolutely hilarious". It all makes for a good time, though it doesn't add up to anything more than the sum of its parts.

That's not a criticism, only a style of comedy. The same could be said about Police Squad, the original Naked Gun, any of the Monty Python productions, or most Mel Brooks movies. This is an approach to comedy that's largely faded, and the point of this remake may simply boil down to once again making movies that don't have a point. To that end, it works.

Regardless, we should talk about Christmas. Or actually New Year's. And a little bit about Halloween, despite the fact it's technically set over a period of about a week leading up to New Year's. But also a month or two before Halloween.

Okay, the Halloween thing is based on a single throwaway visual gag involving a Spirit Halloween banner, which is... honestly, I should probably have tossed up a spoiler warning, because it's one of my favorite jokes in the whole movie. Does it make sense in the context of subsequent story beats specifying everything we've been seeing was set in late December? No. Is it absurd to even type the word "context" in a review of this kind of movie? Yes.

Based on the climax of the film occurring on New Year's Eve and the loosely defined timeline, the movie should start sometime around Christmas Day, but the holiday is never referenced, nor do I recall seeing a single decoration. There is, however, an extended montage in which Frank and Beth go to a wintery cabin in the mountains, use a book of magic to preform a dark ritual that brings a snowman to life, celebrate with the snowman, briefly incorporate him in foreplay before excluding him from their lovemaking, barely survive him turning evil and seeking revenge, decapitate him, then return to the city.

So there are some holiday elements there. They don't affect the plot, they're only present as an extended joke, and the whole bit could be cut without changing anything other than the runtime... but... yeah, they do an evil Frosty bit. Or maybe a Jack Frost homage. Or the other Jack Frost - take your pick. Maybe this was supposed to be occurring during Christmas, though there's no real indication that's the case. You could also interpret all of this as some kind of fantasy sequence. It doesn't matter. Nothing in this movie matters. But, again, that's intentional.

Whether this is something you want to see or not comes down to how nostalgic you are for these sorts of movies. I found this fun enough as a diversion, but the lack of substance absolutely serves as a ceiling to how much I took away from the experience. I have fond memories of the movies this is an homage to, and - to its credit - I think this does those films and that style justice. However, I couldn't help but think that comedy has moved on from those days, and maybe that's for the best. Still, it was nice watching a throwback to the kinds of movies I grew up loving, even if the best I can do is a tepid recommendation.

And, at the risk of repeating myself too many times, this is only a "holiday movie" on the flimsiest of technicalities. There's no special reason to seek it out during the Christmas season, as opposed to any other time.