The Naked Gun (2025) review

Leslie Nielsen, who starred as the original Detective Frank Drebin on the TV show Police Squad! and its big screen features, may have left us in 2010, but Liam Neeson is here to play his equally incredulous son: in this fourth installment of the Naked Gun franchise, Drebin Jr. is busy investigating the mysterious death of computer programmer Simon Davenport, receives a visit from Davenport's distraught sister Beth (Pamela Anderson) and starts to suspect self-driving car developer Richard Cane (Danny Huston) is up to no good.  Keeping with the spirit of the series, there are sight gags and goofs every couple of moments, but they're of a (sometimes) hit and (often) miss nature, and while I hate to join the chorus and say that Neeson's probably not appropriate for the (tricky) lead role, he at least tries to make it work (despite being better suited for revenge pictures and historical dramas).  Even with a sub-ninety-minute running time it loses a ton of energy before the end credits, although I will confess there are two sequences that made me laugh out loud: the one involving chili dogs and the other featuring a vengeful Jack Frost.