The Naked Gun is getting rave reviews from critics and audiences, with a 90% Tomatometer, 82% Popcornmeter and an A- CinemaScore. A big reason for that is seeing Liam Neeson in a comedy, who is known for playing serious, stoic and authoritative characters in films such as Batman Begins, Taken, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Another reason why the film is hilarious is thanks to the writers, which includes director Akiva Schaffer, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand.
“We just sort of tried to get in touch with our inner child, which is convenient because we’re adult children,” Dan Gregor replied to Nerd Reactor about the humor including fart jokes. “The joy of getting to play in this space is that jokes can be really silly, really ridiculous. Everything is sort of available. And, you know, we didn’t want to censor ourselves in any way.”
Snowman Sequence
One of the highlights in the film was the snowman sequence, and it is sure to be a hit with audiences this weekend. It involves a love triangle between Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson’s Beth Davenport in a remote cabin.
“There was nothing too far,” Doug Mand said of the Snowman sequence. “I mean, like we definitely had more stuff like them becoming a family, serving like waffles and teaching the snowman how to read.”
“We actually made it more PG that we eventually ended up cutting that,” Gregor added. “But that was the sort of process of creating that started very much from honestly being obsessed with the original Naked Gun, where they have one of the most iconically hilarious love montages of all time. The scene where they’re about to make love, wearing full-body condoms, is genuinely one of the best physical prop gags of all time.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Another hilarious gag is Neeson as Drebin and his love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“The Buffy run where he’s talking about [Beth] accidentally deleting his Buffy episodes is a case in point where we’re just asking ourselves this basic assignment of like, ‘What’s the stupidest thing that doesn’t belong in Liam Neeson’s mouth?'” Gregor explained. “And so it was like, ‘Yeah, I want to hear Liam Neeson talk about being a super fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“I would say that Liam was game for everything,” Mand said. “So it maybe felt like it was like, ‘This guy didn’t want to do anything.’ It almost feels weird to see this very serious actor do it. But Liam, the person, could not have been more game and more of a joy in this movie.”
How Ugly Sonic Replaced Jar Jar Binks
Gregor and Mand have worked with Schaffer on a previous comedy, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. The live-action animated film featured the return of Ugly Sonic, the initial version of Sonic that was hated by the internet when the first Sonic the Hedgehog teaser was released.
“Oh, I love Ugly Sonic,” Mand exclaimed with joy. “We’ve always been fans of his. We don’t even really recognize a pretty Sonic, as we call him. Look, it just fit in with the world. We were part of the conceit of Rescue Rangers, where cartoons could get plastic surgery. They could make themselves look different.”
The writers originally had Jar Jar Binks in mind for that spot, giving him a Shakespearean, Michael Cain, and Ian McKellen kind of feel.
“The idea of cast-off actors where their careers had burnt out, and that was it for a long time,” Mand added. “And then it eventually it worked its way even through animatics, where it was still Jar Jar Binks. Eventually, I think Kathleen Kennedy was like, ‘F*** no! Get this out of the f***ing movie.’ And we were like, ‘Okay.'” And so then we went back to the drawing board and tried to think of other characters that had disgraced themselves in the public eye. And Sonic was just enough in the rearview mirror that it worked out perfectly. He couldn’t be happier.”
The Naked Gun was released in theaters on August 1, 2025.
