“The Naked Gun”, a legacy sequel to the Naked Gun franchise, is as thoroughly silly and funny as required. Just like its three predecessors including the 1988 film of the same name, the movie is willing to throw a heap of gags and jokes from the beginning to the end, and the overall result is mostly successful enough to draw laughs and chuckles from us.

Liam Neeson, who gives the funniest performance in his career since his droll supporting voice performance in “The Lego Movie” (2014), plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., who is incidentally the son of the hero of the three Naked Gun films played by Leslie Nielsen. The opening scene shows Drebin swiftly (and hilariously) handling a bunch of bank robbers, and that is more than enough to see how willing Neeson and the movie are to do anything to amuse or tickle us.

Anyway, after clashing with his ever-suffering boss, Drebin is assigned to some other case which looks more trivial compared to that bank robbery incident. A certain prominent engineer is found dead, and it seems to be a mere unfortunate car accident, but Drebin is soon visited by Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), who is the sister of the victim and has also been a fairly popular novelist. She believes that her brother was actually murdered because he was about to disclose something about his boss, but Drevin’s mind is more occupied with how sexy she looks during their first meeting.

Nevertheless, Drevin begins to suspect the victim’s boss Richard Cane (Danny Huston), who is incidentally your arrogant tech billionaire not so different from Elon Musk and does have a diabolical plan behind his back. With a special device called P.L.O.T. (“Primordial Law of Toughness) Device” (Don’t laugh, folks), he is about to do something not so far from what Samuel L. Jackson’s villain character attempts to do in “Kingsman: The Secret Service” (2015), and he is certainly ready to have his henchmen take care of Drevin once Drevin comes to meddle with his plan in one way or another.

Meanwhile, things become a bit more complicated for Drevin’s investigation as Davenport gets herself more involved in the case. Although he does not welcome this much at first, it does not take much time for them to sense the mutual attraction between them, and that leads to a couple of hilarious sequences to behold. It is too bad that the trailer of the movie showed us a bit of one of these sequences in advance, but both of these sequences are still hilarious enough to make me laugh a lot during my viewing.

Despite its short running time (85 minutes), the movie comes to lose its comic momentum around its climactic part unfolded in a mixed martial arts match on the night of New Year’s Eve, but the screenplay director Akiva Shcaffer and his co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand continues to throw many gags and jokes as before, and we come to laugh again thanks to another outrageous moment to behold. I will not go into details here, but I can tell you that it is funny enough for me to overlook the laws of physics for a while.

Above all, it is really amusing to see Leeson firmly sticking to his usual absolute seriousness without any hint of self-consciousness. For this, he surely brings his tough guy persona which has been utilized well in a fair share of good and bad action thriller films during last 17 years since “Taken” (2008), but he ably demonstrates the more lightweight side of his acting talent with his thoroughly deadpan performance, which constantly anchors the film even when it stumbles a bit from time to time.

On the opposite, Pamela Anderson, whose career has been rising again thanks to her recent acclaimed performance in “The Last Showgirl” (2024), holds her own place well besides her co-star, and the result is commendable enough to be compared with her brief cameo appearance in “Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (2006). Just like Neeson, Anderson plays straight to her comic materials without any self-aware wink, and she and Neeson also click well together with undeniable comic chemistry.

Around Neeson and Anderson, the movie assembles a number of notable performers, and they also stick to being quite serious without any misstep. While Paul Walter Hauser, who incidentally plays the son of George Kennedy’s character in the first three Naked Gun movies, is certainly dependable as usual, Danny Huston and Kevin Durand have each own fun moment as the main villain characters of the story, and CCH Pounder, a veteran actress whom I still fondly remember for Oscar-nominated film “Baghdad Cafe” (1987), is effectively unflappable as demanded. In addition, I also enjoyed the unexpected cameo appearance of one certain recognizable actor around the climactic part of the film, about whom I will not say anything for not spoiling any of your fun.

In conclusion, “The Naked Gun” may not reach to the sheer zaniness of its three solid predecessors (Full Disclosure: I even like “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult” (1994) mainly for that hilarious sequence unfolded at the Academy Awards ceremony), but it is still a fairly enjoyable comedy film, and I will be delighted if Neeson gets another chance to play his character. I do not know whether he will follow the footsteps of Neeson after this movie, but it is nice to see how funny he can be, and he needs to do that more in my inconsequential opinion.