The Naked Gun
The Naked Gun
As I write this, Liam Neeson, of all people, has just landed one of the best-reviewed comedies of the entire 2020s, his new reprisal of The Naked Gun.
As dozens of reviews pour in, The Naked Gun has a 96% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, down from a 100% a short while ago. It’s still in flux, but if it maintains that figure, it is tied for second place in terms of the best-reviewed US-based comedy since 2020.
Here’s the list of the other movies that The Naked Gun is tied with or just above during this time period:
- The Mitchells Versus the Machines (2021) – 97%
- The Naked Gun (2025) – 96%
- Shiva Baby (2020) – 96%
- Language Lessons (2021) – 96%
- The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) – 96%
- Palm Springs (2020) – 94%
- Dinner In America (2022) – 91%
- Bottoms (2023) – 91%
- Joy Ride (2023) – 90%
As you can see, it’s in high company, though I would argue this is probably one of the highest-profile comedies on the list other than maybe The Banshees of Insherin, given that it stars big A-lister Liam Neeson, plus the always-recognizable Pamela Anderson, who has been going through a career resurgence as of late. News broke yesterday that Neeson and Anderson may in fact be dating now, making this extra adorable.
The Naked Gun is a return to being the sort of absurdist comedy that simply does not get made anymore, and somehow, Liam Neeson, of all people, turns out to be the perfect man to lead it after making the same Taken variant action movies for most of the last ten years. If you don’t know what this style of humor is, you can watch the trailer below and figure it out pretty quickly.
In terms of these scores, I would argue it’s very hard to get people to agree on what’s funny rather than what’s scary or emotional or a fun blockbuster, given how subjective humor is. So when you see a movie with this level of consensus, clearly it’s done something right.
The Naked Gun will be released this Friday on August 1, and we’ll see how it ends up performing at the box office, if these reviews and Naked Gun nostalgia can translate into solid revenue. But comedies have pretty low thresholds for success with their not-high budgets much of the time, and just the fact that this exists and is this good is a win at baseline.
So, we have a comedy classic on our hands, and one that more people are likely to watch than any others on that list, I’d say. Check it out for yourself this Friday.
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