A Good Joke Never Dies—But Can It Survive 2025?
Paramount's dropped the new trailer for their “Naked Gun” reboot, and yeah—I'm laughing, but also bracing for impact. The first thing you'll notice? Neeson isn't kidding around. And that's exactly why it works. Sort of. For now.
There's a recurring fantasy in Hollywood: breathe life into a dead genre by cloning what made it tick. Sometimes that gets you “21 Jump Street.” Usually, you get dust. Yet here comes Akiva Schaffer (one-third of The Lonely Island, the madman behind “Popstar” and “Hot Rod”) fielding Liam Neeson, stoic as ever, as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr.—son of Leslie Nielsen's original chaos agent.
Remember that feeling? The kind of punchline-hit-every-30-seconds madness the first “Naked Gun” dropped back in ‘88? That's what the test screenings are saying: “classic spoof energy,” gags everywhere, a lean 90 minutes that doesn't stop for a wink at Twitter, just plows through lowbrow (highbrow?) absurdity. A random attendee says it's “perfectly in tone.” Not every joke kills—but there aren't any duds hanging in the air long enough to smell.
Small miracle, because… let's be honest, deadpan parody died on the altar of meme culture years ago. So why bother? Simple: Liam Neeson gets it. He leans so hard into his own self-serious persona, he loops back into comedy. We've seen this before—the action star turned sendup—but rarely with this much specific gravity. He plays it so straight, reality buckles around him.
Pamela Anderson's here, hamming it up, which shouldn't work but somehow does. Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, Kevin Durand, Busta Rhymes (no, seriously)—it feels like someone's fever dream cast list, pulled from a Reddit thread. Schaffer, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand (the brains who somehow made 2022's “Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers” actually fun) are betting that this kind of ensemble, with a long leash for physical gags, is what the doctor ordered.
The Ghost of Spoofs Past
Now, there's a cloud overhead—David Zucker, co-creator of the original, wasn't just left off the guest list, he's been loudly skeptical, warning that this isn't an act you can repeat without breaking something. There's always that risk. Zucker might be right. But if you're going to risk it? Do it with the team who cracked “Popstar” (the last time anyone made me choke on popcorn with laughter in a multiplex).
There's something in the water—after years of earnest, self-aware “comedies” that forgot to be funny, we're maybe, just maybe, ready for jokes with sharp teeth and zero apologies. But is anyone still paying for them? Is the multiplex crowd, now trained for superhero snark and horror shocks, going to show up for pure spoof?
Why Now, Why Not?
This reboot isn't nostalgia—it's resurrection, but with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The Lonely Island brand of chaos, filtered through a studio big enough to care about the release date (August 1, 2025) but weird enough to let the creator run wild, is a strange gamble. Seth MacFarlane's on as producer. (“Family Guy” fans, take your bets.)
My cynical side's waiting for the trailer to outshine the movie. There are rumors of more test screenings coming—god, imagine a Midnight Madness debut at TIFF (it won't, but let me dream). If the energy holds, if that Neeson-winks-but-never-winks energy carries through… this could, against all odds, be the summer's secret weapon.
So, what's it all about? The trailer: pure farce, no apologies, and I laughed out loud at least twice. The date: August 1st, 2025. The question (nagging, persistent): Have we missed this kind of movie? Or did it miss us?
Either way: someone at Paramount's betting big that a single, stone-faced man with a set of very particular comedic skills can still save the force—and summer comedy.
