The Naked Gun has broken a Rotten Tomatoes audience score record after more than three decades. The new comedy movie stars Liam Neeson as wacky cop Frank Drebin Jr. and acts as a legacy sequel to the original Naked Gun trilogy, which ran from 1988 through 1994, starring Airplane‘s Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin.
Drebin is a character who originated in the 1982 series Police Squad!, which was created by Airplane‘s David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and only ran for one six-episode season. Previously, glowing The Naked Gun reviews earned the sequel a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 90% from critics, which is the best for any movie in the franchise.
Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated an official Popcornmeter score for The Naked Gun now that it has more than 100 verified user reviews. Although its 87% Popcornmeter score is slightly lower than its Tomatometer score, it still marks the best audience score for any of the Naked Gun movies, and the best since the 1988 original, which has 84%.
What This Means For The Naked Gun
It’s Upholding The Franchise’s Legacy
2025’s The Naked Gun has continued the franchise’s longtime streak of earning positive reviews. In fact, over the years, the only score to slip below the 60% threshold, past which a тιтle can be considered Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, was the 54% audience score earned by Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult.
However, the scores of the Liam Neeson movie are even more remarkable because the only installment to have earned better scores on either the Tomatometer or the Popcornmeter is the original Police Squad! series, which earned 91% from critics and 95% from audiences.
Additionally, the show’s Popcornmeter score is the least statistically significant of the bunch, as it only comes from roughly 50 user reviews, whereas the three original movies all have at least 100,000 user reviews. Below, see a breakdown of the Rotten Tomatoes scores of the entire franchise:
|
тιтle |
Tomatometer |
Popcornmeter |
|---|---|---|
|
Police Squad! (1982) |
91% |
95% |
|
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) |
88% |
84% |
|
The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) |
77% |
65% |
|
Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994) |
65% |
54% |
|
The Naked Gun (2025) |
90% |
87% |
While the Popcornmeter score will most likely fluctuate as more reviews are added throughout the theatrical run of The Naked Gun, if it can maintain its current level, it could cement itself in history as one of the best-regarded installments in an already iconic comedy movie franchise.
Our Take On The Naked Gun Audience Score
The Movie Could Kickstart A New Era For Liam Neeson
It remains to be seen how The Naked Gun performs at the box office. However, if its Rotten Tomatoes records are any indication, it could become a solid success. Should that happen, it could earn a sequel, potentially leading to a rash of Liam Neeson comedies in the same way that the success of 2008’s Taken transformed him into an action star.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
