“The Naked Gun” punches up the franchise’s funniest joke

Evangelists of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker comedies of the late 20th century might consider what I’m about to say sacrilege, but “The Naked Gun” franchise is the pinnacle of ZAZ-style spoof brilliance — yes, even more so than the trio’s 1980 gold standard, “Airplane!” In a filmography so packed with laugh-a-second gags, 1988’s “The Naked Gun” and its two sequels are funnier, sharper and more daring than anything else the trio cooked up. That’s because, unlike the non-sequitur gags in other ZAZ films, “The Naked Gun” is built atop one very sturdy joke, from which almost every punchline springs: Cops are bumbling, prejudiced buffoons who can barely tell the gun in their holster from the can opener in their kitchen.

Looking back, it’s almost shocking how much the three original “Naked Gun” movies can get away with because of the franchise’s core joke. Off-color bits that tickled the audience with uncomfortable laughter almost 40 years ago — like, say, the transphobic reveal in the final act of “Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult” — have aged terribly, there’s no doubt about that. But considering that Leslie Nielsen’s inept Lieutenant Frank Drebin is a cinematic stand-in for your everyday racist, sexist, violent, piggish, lumbering lawman, some casual transphobia fits the bill.

When David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker nailed down this broad joke that the common public could get behind, they established a patsy to hang every racy, questionable punchline onto, always making sure to circle back around to the central message to wipe their hands clean. After an hour of sight gags and wordplay bookended by debatably problematic jokes, the first “Naked Gun” scores a lethal one-two punch to wipe its slate of any misdeeds when, after being suspended from the force for incompetence, Frank randomly pulls an old file from a cabinet. “The missing evidence in the Kellner case, look at that, he was innocent!” Frank exclaims before tossing the file aside. When Police Squad Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) follows up with a lament about Frank’s firing, Frank responds, “Just think, the next time I shoot someone, I could be arrested.”

To properly reboot the “Naked Gun” franchise as we know and love it, director, co-writer and Lonely Island alum Akiva Schaffer, along with co-writers Doug Mand and Dan Gregor, also had to reboot the series’ core joke about law enforcement inefficiency. But as much as the people want to laugh — and by God are we practically begging for a hearty chuckle these days — making police brutality and institutional ineptitude the butt of a joke could be a major risk. Audiences are clamoring for great theatrical comedies, but laughter shouldn’t come at the cost of progressiveness, especially in a moment when so much of the media is willfully regressing toward conservatism. Schaffer’s “The Naked Gun,” then, is the ideal solution —a brisk, gut-bustingly funny film that updates the series’ central joke without sacrificing it. In typical ZAZ fashion, “The Naked Gun” lampoons the state of policing and prods the viewer’s prickly relationship to cop films and television, making this the rare reboot that has something worthwhile to say, in a moment when it needs to be said.

In the fourth “Naked Gun” film, it’s a new day at Police Squad, the special unit of the LAPD devoted to sensitive, high-profile crimes. Things look different now. The old team is gone, and their spots have been filled by a bunch of equally unfit dolts, chief — or, should I say, lieutenant — among them, Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson), the son of Police Squad’s most devoted jester.

Things look different outside the coffee-cup-strewn confines of the fictional force’s headquarters, too. In the last five years alone, countless Americans have reckoned with the fact that the country’s policing and carceral systems are fundamentally broken. Early pandemic unrest combined with massive, nationwide protests in the wake of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd in May 2020 didn’t just see the veil lifted, but ripped off and destroyed. Our country was rightfully angry, and it was impossible to turn a blind eye to the suffering and violence that protestors incurred at the hands of the police for simply exercising their First Amendment rights. The public’s righteous indignation affected scripted media, too, with long-running shows like “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Law & Order” criticized for their portrayals of a fractured system. Copaganda didn’t die, of course, but it did take a long-deserved hit, making newly greenlit cop media feel loathsome and thoughtless.

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That lingering distaste is precisely what makes Schaffer’s “The Naked Gun” feel so refreshing. The franchise already had ZAZ’s ironclad primary joke to prop it up and make it look shiny against the dull, flagrant copaganda media. But Schaffer’s take — not a new direction, but rather an ironically straight-faced reboot of the deadpan ZAZ style — supplies the well-trodden gag with a necessary contemporary jolt. After an undercover sting operation goes awry at the beginning of the film, Frank earns a reprimand from Police Squad’s Chief Davis (CCH Pounder). “Since when do cops have to follow the law?” Frank asks her, shocked. The joke seems almost simple, and it’s a credit to the film’s breakneck pace that there’s little time to analyze what makes it so funny before the next punchline. But while this line is Schaffer and co.’s way of winking at current events, it’s also a nod to the fact that the original Frank Drebin rarely received any punitive action, and a comment on the the depiction of cops as saviors in the media, so long as they catch the bad guy at the end of the day. A three-pronged joke at the top of a reboot 30 years in the making? Not a bad way to kick things off.

Where things could easily take a left turn is if this version of “The Naked Gun” were to make its punchlines too blunt, or nods to its own barbed nature as cop media blatantly obvious. And admittedly, some of the quips about body cams feel overly anticipated and undercooked. But Schaffer, Mand and Gregor are clearly graduates of the ZAZ school of punch-ups, and their ability to circle back toward police lunacy is classic “Naked Gun.” Take an extended bit about Frank’s body camera catching him eating five chili dogs in one day. What starts as an eye-rollingly juvenile fart joke is saved by Frank commandeering a coffee shop bathroom with a line of civilians in front of it, unholstering his weapon, and firing it into the air on “police business.” For a franchise where Nielsen once said, “Blowing away a fleeing suspect with my .44 magnum used to be everything to me,” the updated punchline fits snugly with what came before.

And it’s not just police violence that’s on the menu for roasting; police incompetence is fair game too. Utter asininity is the bread and butter of “The Naked Gun,” and the movie milks cop idiocy for all its worth. In a time when New York Governor Kathy Hochul has ensured that I see cops not just littering my subway stations, but actually littering — throwing their garbage onto the ground, people! — Schaffer’s film feels like a welcome assurance that I haven’t lost my mind. New York Police Department cops love to stand around and play Candy Crush on their phones while they look for non-white fare evaders and fruit and water sellers on hot summer days. They are all but useless in a city where we’ve been taught to look out for each other. Their presence constantly reminds me of one of my favorite, classic ZAZ jokes from the 1988 “Naked Gun,” where Nielsen’s Frank ensures a bystander that no one on the force will rest until a criminal is caught, before motioning to Captain Hocken and adding, “Now let’s go get a bite to eat.”

Neeson’s Frank, like his father, is too caught up in disorganization and romance to do his job properly. (And credit must be given to Pamela Anderson, whose head-turning foil Beth Davenport is the perfect reminder of the star’s underrated comedy chops.) Frank, quite literally, cannot read a sign to save his life, incriminating himself in the film’s central mystery when he spots a bloody knife with a handwritten sign that says, “Pick me up.” He, like so many police officers we’ve seen, is a complete blockhead.

But Schaffer’s film has the uniquely difficult task of making Frank look like an idiot without making the police as a whole seem lovably obtuse. Whether we realize it in the moment or not, the media we watch — even high-concept spoofs like this — has power, and a film that doesn’t strike the right tone with a sensitive subject is liable to alter malleable opinions, or be used for covertly nefarious agendas. And at this specific point in time, when ICE, the National Guard and state police often bleed into one another, messaging is critical.

Happily, “The Naked Gun” takes all the right jabs at widespread institutional failure while throwing another elbow at the people who are responsible for it. The film cleverly lampoons the blithe attitude shared by cops, while making plenty of space for the series’ beloved sight gags, situational punchlines, wordplay and purely fortuitous jokes that have nothing to do with the actual plot. While David Zucker told the Hollywood Reporter in May that he didn’t think this spoof would feel “current” for a time when “they don’t make cop movies anymore,” Schaffer’s film is surefire proof that sometimes, old tricks just need a modern refresh to work as well as they used to.

The slow, creeping death of the theatrical comedy has depressingly coincided with an age when things have never been less funny. But “The Naked Gun” is not a smirk at all of those who are suffering; it’s an invitation to laugh with the integrity that we’re rarely afforded when watching mainstream media. While it may not be a perfect comedy — there are a few notable lulls — it’s the comedy we need at this moment. If things have to get worse, let “The Naked Gun” punch even harder. Ten more sequels, and stat!