Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gun starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson leans all the way into the absurdist comedy of the original movie, and finishes with a hilarious ending that keeps rolling right through the credits. Featuring Danny Huston, Paul Walter Hauser, and a number of huge surprise cameos, The Naked Gun has earned high Rotten Tomatoes scores and tremendous reviews.

Although technically a legacy sequel, The Naked Gun has its own unique style and tone that sets it apart from The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad! and its sequels, while still remaining reverent to the original movies. Neeson stars as Frank Drebin, Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic police detective Frank Drebin.

The Naked Gun‘s non-stop avalanche of absurdist humor is held together by the loosest framework of a plot, which is a feature not a bug, to be clear. After foiling a bank robbery and investigating a car crash initially deemed a suicide, Frank finds himself entangled in a tech billionaire’s (Huston) plot to cull the Earth of average people and start a new world.

Pamala Anderson stars as Beth Davenport, the sister of the car crash victim and Frank’s love interest, out for revenge against Richard Cane, the billionaire behind her brother’s death. As the duo unravel the breadth of Cane’s plan, they discover he intends to send out a signal that will turn everyone on the Earth savage using a New Year’s Eve ball drop, causing humanity to rip itself apart.

How Frank And Beth Stopped Cane’s Plan

The Resolution Is Appropriately Absurd

There isn’t much subtlety to how Frank and Beth stop Cane’s plan, which does momentarily succeed when he triggers the device (hilariously labeled the P.L.O.T. Device) early. As Cane and his fellow billionaires attempt to escape the carnage and make it to his secret bunker to wait out the planet’s demise, Frank finds an utterly silly way to pursue them.

Following a prayer from his son earlier in the movie to send him “a sign”, Leslie Nielsen’s unseen Frank Drebin, Sr. manifests a mᴀssive owl from the afterlife. Frank, Jr. grabs the owl’s claws (talking to it as if it’s his father) and it carries him above the motorcycling billionaires, kicking them off their bikes as he goes.

It leads to a final confrontation between Frank and Cane, which is over after just one punch when Cane realizes how much getting punched hurts. A vengeful Beth goes to kill Cane and avenge her brother, but is stopped by Frank, and they reverse the effects of the P.L.O.T. Device instead. The movie ends with a pᴀssionate kiss between Frank and Beth, and one last Frank Drebin, Sr. owl fly-by.

There is nothing complex about the ending, but it’s extremely funny in how it satirizes the typical big chase scene and final showdown between the hero and the villain. The plot is wrapped up cleanly, with no obvious door towards a sequel left ajar.

Why You Should Stay For The Naked Gun’s Credits

The Jokes Don’t Stop When The Narrative Ends

However, the jokes are not done just because the story is over. As the credits roll, there are a plethora of small visual/written gags hidden in the credits themselves, a tradition carried over from previous Naked Gun movies. Viewers will notice jokes like an eye exam, a Netflix pᴀssword, and a brief mid-credits scene that sees Frank and Beth break the fourth wall and interact with the credits themselves.

Playing over the credits is a song paying off a joke from earlier in The Naked Gun. An upset Frank notes to Beth midway through the movie that he wrote a song about finding love again after his wife died, angrily noting that he “booked studio time” to record it. Frank’s song is what the audience hears, and it sees him both singing and hilariously exploring the studio space in real time.

The post-credits scene pays off another joke from earlier in the movie. As Richard Cane describes his end-of-the-world bunker to the billionaires, he notes that Naked Gun franchise stalwart Weird Al Yankovic will be saved to perform for them. The post-credits scene sees Weird Al take the stage in front of an empty room; nobody told Weird Al that Cane’s plot had failed.

What Director Akiva Schaffer Has Said About The Naked Gun’s Ending

The Movie’s Simplicity Is Its Key Element

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, director Akiva Schaffer provided some insight into his approach to making a spoof comedy like The Naked Gun, especially with a number of successful examples to look at from the past. For him, the key is simplicity in the story, and focusing on the jokes:

And there’s a way that Austin Powers, Naked Gun, Airplane! tell their stories that is deceptively complicated, but comes across incredibly simple. You can’t ever confuse the audience; if there’s any confusion, they’re gonna be out on the jokes. Your story has to be interesting enough to keep them engaged, but then the movie is over and people can go, “What was it about? Oh, the story doesn’t matter.” That’s the sleight of hand of it.

In reality, the story doesn’t matter at all for a spoof comedy like The Naked Gun. It’s a vehicle for the absurdist comedy, which itself satirizes the very tropes that comprise the narrative. It’s a great example of why The Naked Gun was so well-reviewed: the emphasis is on the gags, not the plot.

The Naked Gun Has A Good Chance At Getting A Sequel

It All Comes Down To The Box Office Return

The future of The Naked Gun franchise is entirely dependent on how the reboot performs at the box office. With a budget of just $42 million, it wouldn’t need to go too crazy to hit the standard 2.5x the budget, which is the typical barometer for box office success. Early projections placed it between $30 and $40 million for its opening weekend, although those numbers have dropped somewhat.

The heavily-male and older-skewing audience for this type of comedy has plenty of other choices at the box office in the early stages of August, highlighted by superhero franchise juggernauts Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. However, rave reviews and positive word of mouth could drive more success than initially projected for The Naked Gun.

ᴀssuming its financial viability, there are plenty of directions a sequel could go. Schaffer wisely set up no clear paths for a sequel, meaning the next movie can go quite literally anywhere, as long as Liam Neeson (and ideally Pamela Anderson) returns. With the police detective genre, a sequel is as simple as throwing Frank at a new case and coming up with a new cavalcade of gags.

The True Meaning Of The Naked Gun

It’s Proof That Theatrical Comedy Isn’t ᴅᴇᴀᴅ

There is no real thematic depth to mine out of The Naked Gun, but what is important is its role in the modern movie industry. Bigger-budget theatrical comedies are a dying breed, as a lot of the best comedies have moved to TV and streaming platforms. If The Naked Gun is a success, it could give studios more confidence to green-light similar comedies in the future.

Spoof comedies in particular have become increasingly rare, and especially spoof comedies that are actually funny and well-received. The Naked Gun may not necessarily yield a renaissance of that particular subgenre, but it certainly could open the door for future legitimate attempts.

Source: Vanity Fair