Summary
- The Naked Gun trailer is filled with rapid-fire jokes and gags, promising a return to classic comedies.
- Director Akiva Schaffer brings his trademark humor to the film, known for hits like "I'm On A Boat" and "Popstar."
- The trailer showcases clever gags and action scenes, embracing the silly spirit of the original Naked Gun films.
The trailer for Paramount's The Naked Gun is as self-referential and absurd as it should be, while promising a unique identity with legit action hero Liam Neeson at the forefront. The trailer offers rapid-fire jokes and gags, which appropriately feels like a proper return to classic comedies.
While the trailer isn't necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, many of the funniest comedy movie trailers aren't. The best comedies keep the best laughs for the film itself, and the trailer should just promise a high volume of solidly conceived bits, which The Naked Gun is sure to be filled with. The upcoming film's comedy stylings are perfect for The Naked Gun, and an absolute trademark of its budding director and SNL alumnus, Akiva Schaffer of The Lonely Island.
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Naked Gunn's Director Is A Parody Legend
Akiva Schaffer, member of the comedic pop music group Lonely Island, is responsible for co-writing, directing, and editing many of the band's most clever and entertaining music videos. He recently co-wrote and edited the popular Here I Go SNL video featuring Andy Samberg and Charlie XCX about calling the cops on neighbors, even making a quick cameo toward the end as a concerned man filming with his camera phone.
One of The Lonely Island's biggest hits, I'm On A Boat, featuring T-Pain, debuted at number 56 on the Billboard Top 100 on its release. That is an extremely high chart for a parody rap song about novice boating. Schaffer also co-directed the 2016 Lonely Island film Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.
The film followed Andy Samberg's Conner as he clumsily navigates stardom after splitting from his boy band. The film earned a respectable 79% Rotten Tomatoes score and featured a bunch of fun and catchy music videos written and directed by Schaffer. The funniest and catchiest of them all was probably The Finest Girl, a song about a woman telling Conner she'd like him to treat her like the United States treated Bin Laden. That is to say, to treat her with great contempt in a crude fashion. It's as crafted as it is crass, and that's exactly the recipe Schaffer used to whip up his take on The Naked Gun.
The Naked Gun Trailer Is Hilarious
The Naked Gun (2025) is produced by Seth MacFarlane, famous for creating the talking stuffed teddy bear comedy film Ted, which has seen a renaissance lately with a Hulu series of the same name. The film also features rising star Paul Walter Hauser, who played the laugh-out-loud funny comedic foil in 2017's I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie.
The Naked Gun's trailer makes great use of delayed info gags. For instance, it opens up with Neeson seeming as if he's about to have 'one of those days' in traffic, before an arm reaches in from nowhere and hands him a cup of coffee. It's a surreal gag, and exactly the kind of visual gag that doesn't need to make sense to be funny. It's what the Naked Gun movies became famous for and all are indicative of the work Schaffer has pulled off for over a decade with the Lonely Island.
The trailer ends with another similarly formatted visual joke, seeing a girl in a school outfit walk into a bank, only to pull off a false facial prosthetic a la Mission Impossible, and reveal Liam Neeson ready to kick some bad guy butt. Speaking of which, it also seems Schaffer has smartly recognized how much of shame it would be to have action hero Liam Neeson star in his film without getting him to throw a few punches. The trailer sees Neeson punching quite a few grunts, and although it's played comedically, he's Liam Neeson so he still sells it like a pro.
Pamela Anderson also notably stars in the upcoming film, as she hasn't been in many of them lately, save for her BAFTA award-nominated The Last Showgirl which was released last year and co-starred Brenda Song. Anderson was lauded for the acting chops she displayed in the emotional drama, and it will be interesting to see if she's able to bring any of that gravitas into the silly, slapstick Naked Gun revival, should there be any allotment for it.
The Naked Gun Looks Appropriately Silly
Comedy, of course, is suggestive, and The Naked Gun's trailer may not make many people laugh out loud just yet, despite its clever reveals and well-conceived setups. Still, it is amusing enough to just recapture the spirit of the original film, where, even when the jokes weren't keel over funny, many of them were entertaining enough by way of merely seeing what they'd done there conceptually.
The original Naked Gun was littered with eye rolls and smirks, but with so many jokes and gags packed into one movie, one of them is sure to hit pretty often, and when they did, they hit hard. The original Naked Gun boasts a laundry list of standout bits, including sending OJ Simpson down stadium steps in a wheelchair and over the railing. Schaffer is sure to fit right into the franchise's slapstick canon with his locked and loaded arsenal of offbeat humor.
The Naked Gun
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- Release Date
- August 1, 2025
- Runtime
- 85 minutes
- Director
- Akiva Schaffer
- Writers
- Akiva Schaffer, Doug Mand, Dan Gregor, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker
Cast
-
Liam NeesonFrank Drebin Jr. -
Pamela AndersonBeth Davenport
