What started in 1982 as a completely crazy sitcom “The Naked Pistol” on TV wrote with “The Naked Cam” (1988), “The naked cannon 2½” (1991) and “The naked cannon 33 1/3”. Leslie Nielsen made the trilogy about the completely sophisticated, but still amazingly effective Frank Drebin, police officer of the special unit, the last undisputed superstar of the parodie genre (over later total failures such as “2002 – crazy in space” we are flipping the coat of silence). Without any doubt, the three films are still among the most moved comedies of all time-and are therefore actually made for the meme age.
Nevertheless, a “The naked cannon“-new edition was astonishingly long in coming. When the project was announced for the first time in December 2013 (!), Ed Helms (“ Hangover ”) was initially intended for the role of Frank Drebin Jr. But because the original director David Zucker, which was still involved in the project at the time, was no longer up to date, the legacy reboot was prescribed a realignment: Frank Drebin Jr. should no longer do his service as a police officer but as an agent. But then it all smashed – luckily! After all, it is difficult to imagine that Ed Helms would have been only half as funny in the role as Liam Neeson.
Leslie Nielsen (who died in 2010 at the age of 84) really couldn't have wished.
After stopping a bank robbery in the little girl costume with Death Lolli, Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is celebrated by his colleagues of the special unit. However, his boss Davis (CCH Pounder) sees it very differently – and, because of his constant solo proceeds, puts her lieutenant to the traffic police. There Frank and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) are dealing with a mysterious accident, in which a tech engineer with his electric car has fallen down without any brake lane.
Frank initially assumes a suicide, but when Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), the victim's seductive sister, personally pronounces him, he takes a closer look at the case. The first hints lead directly to Richard Cane (Danny Huston), who, together with his henchman Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand), obviously pursues plans on how to always pursue dodgy tech billionaires in such films …
Completely or not at all
“The naked cannon” inventor David Zucker It may doubt whether the parody concept at that time is still up to date. But producer Seth McFarlane (“Ted”) and director Akiva Schaffer were obviously very certain on this point – or at least they have made themselves: “Fuck it, we are now doing this without regard to nothing – and if necessary we will just fail catastrophically.”
Her “the naked cannon” reboot is like the role models in the best sense-and not too good for a Kalauer: at least the romantic collage around a cannibalist ménage à trois with a demonic snowman would have already flown out in every other project in the first reading. In “The Naked Cam”, a (wonderful) nonsense is mercilessly pulled through.
Have a really good chemistry: Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport, the victim's seductive sister.
Liam Neeson is 100 percent on board: While Leslie Nielsen already looked like you imagined a self-loving Tollpatsch-Cop, the Irish giant benefits with the deep “Taken” voice that he is full against the cliché with his well-trained 1.93 meters-a fact that sucks directly in the first scene as an innocent scene on her Lolli Scout girl is driven to the top. In addition, the character mime for “Schindler's list” gave up every vanity on the door:
With a diarrhea joke with chili dogs, even the otherwise undeterred Frank Drebin Jr. full of shame in its unsuspecting naivety, with its unsuspecting naivety, becomes the darkest corner of the interrogation. And “Baywatch” icon Pamela Anderson risks her second career spring that has just started through “The Last Showgirl”-with a squeaky jazz singing, which makes her appearance as a mysterious noir caricature even more likeable. (You almost want to congratulate Hollywood that a woman of her age is filled as a femme fatal, but if you take a closer look, she is the usual 15 years younger than her male co-star.)
At “Buffy” is the end of funny
As you get used to by “Family Guy” mastermind Seth McFarlane, it will be a little obscure for the pop culture quotes: In addition to a number of allusions to the “naked cannon” trilogy (with reference to original star OJ Simpson), for Frank Drebin Jr. A boundary exceeded in the accidental deletion of his consequences of “Buffy – in the spell of the demons”.
Nevertheless, “the naked cannon” does not become a sprawling quota range, as you can get used to by McFarlanes animation sitcoms. On the contrary: when it comes to gag density, the reboot does not quite come close to the original, but much closer than one would have thought possible these days. So Akiva Schaffer is not wrong if he says that you have to see your film at least three times to discover all the punch lines in the background. The merciless cut also has a large proportion of this: some transition may look a little bumpy, but it is only good for the frenzied pace.
Conclusion: Yes, the best gags are (almost) all in the trailer. But the rest is also (much) funny than one could expect from a “naked cannon” film in 2025 with a clear conscience. In addition, the makers really cut their film away every superfluous gram of fat, which is why the shameless-crispy-crispy 85 minutes pass by.
PS: This criticism is based on the original English version of the film. My colleague Chantal Neumann saw him in the German version and found the synchro “not even bad”. But some words cannot be translated (“Take a Chair”) and others had to bend a lot to get it somehow (“homicide” and “cake battle” instead of “Manslaughter” and “Man's Laughter”).
PPS: This time you shouldn't just stay until the end, because there is still a mid and a post-credit scene. Instead, you should read everything as possible when rolling the credits, because as if there hadn't been enough punch line beforehand, even the end credits are also peppered with all kinds of gags from salad dressings to Netflix passwords.