I love crossover episodes. I used to enjoy when two series I love would promote and air these major events. where similar shows, or shows set in the same world, have characters appear in each. You also had to watch both shows to get the full story. With the introduction of streaming services, I often watch more shows on those platforms than on network television. Therefore, I don’t see crossover events often. This also means that I was extremely excited when Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia decided to do a crossover event.
I love both shows, but they’re so different. Therefore, I wasn’t convinced that this crossover could work, but I remained optimistic because the writing on both series is so brilliant. Neither episode disappointed me. They may be two of each series’ strongest ones. It’s not just the jokes that make them hilarious and memorable.
Warning: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 17 Episode 1, “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary and Abbott Elementary Season 4 Episode 9, Volunteers.
insidious presence of the Gang. There is a whole story where the Abbott Elementary teachers teach Charlie (Charlie Day) to read. A long-running It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia joke has been Charlie’s illiteracy. Therefore, it’s nice to see him finally (temporarily) learn to read. It also makes sense that Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Jacob (Chris Perfetti), and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) are the ones to do it.
They’re all very compassionate people, so only someone with that level of empathy would have the patience and understanding to help Charlie out. Not everything in the episode is wholesome, but innocent enough, especially compared to the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia counterpart episode.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 17, Episode 1, “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary” has some risky humor and storylines. The Gang almost feels like predators around the children, and Sunny very much leans into that idea. It paints them as their true, uncomfortable selves but allows them to play in the Abbott Elementary world. Sunny doesn’t tone things down just because the show it’s paired with is a sweet and funny series. It leans into the fact that these people should be as far away from children as possible.
Abbott Elementary ends the encounter with the Gang in a triumph, sort of wholesome way. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia sort of does the same, but in the Gang’s way. We discover they have been scamming the school and stealing copper piping, but it accidentally helps the school.
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It’s Fun To See The It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Episode Fill In Some Story Gaps From The Abbott Elementary One
“The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary” paints them in a more complex way than we see on “Volunteers.” The Gang does so many ridiculous things while around that school. They try to form a boy band, poach a child for a white basketball team, start a successful coffee business, and so many other ridiculous things. We don’t even see a hint of half of these things on Abbott Elementary.
Then we learn that Dee (Kaitlin Olson) was never interested in Gregory (Tyler James Williams), it was all a ploy to become the star of the documentary. This actually makes more sense than Dee having a genuine interest in him. These additional details help paint each show in distinct ways. It doesn’t feel like we’re watching the same things, just from different perspectives. We’re definitely watching two different episodes that sometimes overlap in scenes.
I worried that the episodes would be too similar and they wouldn’t be as interesting individually and together. However, this was not the case. They complement each other.
(Image credit: FXX)
The It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Episode Allows The Abbott Elementary Characters To Be A Little Darker
One of the funniest scenes in “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary” is when Janine (Quinta Brunson) declares that she’s about to say a bad word about Dee. You expect an innocent response. Something that’s barely profanity. However, she goes all in and goes hard with the cussing. It’s so not like her. We also see more unhinged moments from Janine in this episode. It highlights a dark side of her that Abbott Elementary fans likely didn’t know existed.
Janine is the main character we see tarnished by the brief encounter with the Gang. Nevertheless, we hear so many of the characters use profanity and are disturbed by the Gang. We also learn how Ava (Janelle James) gets away with so much of her bad behavior: bribes. Even the filming crew feels a bit darker knowing they accept them from Ava.
(Image credit: FXX)
I Enjoy How Much We See Of Dennis In The Sunny Episode And How Little We See Of Charlie In It. It’s A Clever Contrast From Abbott Elementary
Glenn Howerton was filming another show while also shooting “Volunteers,” so he was barely in it. However, he makes up for his absence by being front and center in “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary.” His storyline is also a bit more tame than expected. He just spends most of the episode making meth-like coffee.
We see a lot of Dennis because this is more behind-the-scenes footage, so he’s caught on camera. Charlie appears throughout “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary” and participates in their shenanigans, but he doesn’t feel as present as some of the other characters. This is mainly because he was preoccupied with learning to read. The addition of more Dennis and less Charlie ensures that the shows remain cohesive.
(Image credit: FXX)
I Really Enjoy The New Lore Each Series Gains From These Crossovers
I am looking forward to learning a lot more about this Fall Out Boy and Gang beef. I am also excited to see Melissa at Paddy’s Pub randomly again. These are just two of the new lore that have been added from each show. Additionally, I still need to catch up on Abbott Elementary Season 4 to see if there are any other references to the Gang’s appearance, but as of Episode 4 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 17, we have had a few additional references to stuff we saw in “Volunteers,” including explaining how the court order community service happened.
I hope we continue to see more references to “The Gang F***s Up Abbott Elementary” and “Volunteers” in future It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Abbott Elementary episodes. These two are so pivotal to both shows. I would also love to see them cross-over again, and other shows boldly attempt a crossover.
The three-man comedy factory that ruled the 1980s with their fusillades of slapstick, sight gags, loopy non sequiturs and winking innuendo was David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — Hollywood’s ZAZ before David Zaslav. Their legacy rivals that of Mel Brooks in the ’60s and ’70s, most notably via Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies, though I also have a soft spot for their swerve into more conventional farce with the acerbic dark comedy Ruthless People. Even the misstep of Top Secret! yielded its share of laughs, despite attempting to hit an unwieldy jumble of parody targets.
Having honed their skills in a college sketch-comedy troupe, the trio’s strategy was to throw as many jokes per minute at the screen as possible, the sillier the better, ensuring that enough of them stuck to cushion the ones that missed the mark.
The Naked Gun
The Bottom Line
Dumb fun that lands often enough to squeak by.
Release date: Friday, Aug. 1 Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand, Cody Rhodes, Liza Koshy, Eddie Yu, Danny Huston Director: Akiva Schaffer Screenwriters: Dan Gregor, Doug Maud, Akiva Schaffer, based on the TV series Police Squad! created by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Rated PG-13,
1 hour 25 minutes
Their 1982 ABC series spoofing crime procedurals, Police Squad!, lasted just six episodes. But ZAZ resurrected the idea for the big screen in 1988 with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (these guys seldom met an exclamation point they didn’t love), which became a successful trilogy centering on Leslie Nielsen’s bumbling but oblivious Detective Sergeant Frank Drebin.
Cut to 31 years later …
Nobody could accuse director Akiva Schaffer (who, like ZAZ, hails from a comedy trio, The Lonely Island) and his co-writers or producer Seth MacFarlane of lacking affection for the material. That’s evident in the sweet homages to Nielsen and George Kennedy as Capt. Ed Hocken — O.J. Simpson not so much.
The filmmakers follow the formula to a T in this legacy sequel or reboot or whatever you want to call it, enlisting the sons of Drebin (Liam Neeson) and Hocken (Paul Walter Hauser) as the new Police Squad team to provide plot continuity. Even if the movie kind of stalls midway as Schaffer struggles to balance the gags with the action of an overly elaborate crime plot, there are enough laugh-out-loud moments to keep nostalgic fans of the earlier films happy and maybe make some new converts.
Just as Nielsen was established primarily as a dramatic actor before becoming a ZAZ linchpin in Airplane! and The Naked Gun, Neeson arrives trailing the gravitas of his late-career reinvention as a steely dispenser of vengeance and retribution, in Taken et al. The actor’s dead serious delivery provides a subtle meta underlay as Frank Jr. takes down bad guys and tackles a master criminal, starting with a bank robbery prologue whose funniest jokes are given away in the trailer.
The heist ties into the suspicious death of a brilliant tech engineer, whose electric vehicle went off the road. The victim’s sister, Beth Davenport (MVP Pamela Anderson), seeks Frank’s help in investigating what she’s convinced was murder. He tells her to leave the detective work to the professionals, but they both turn up at a club run by her brother’s boss, Edentech founder Richard Kane (Danny Huston).
A mogul cut from the Elon Musk mold, Kane has a nefarious plan involving an amusingly named PLOT Device (Primordial Law of Toughness) with mind-altering properties, which is part of what he calls “Project Inferno.” But before that gets activated, he cozies up to Frank with the gift of Police Squad’s first electric cop car.
Weary of dealing with angry calls from the mayor about Frank’s blithe trail of city property destruction, police chief Davis (CCH Pounder) warns him to play nice with major donor Kane, since Police Squad’s funding is at risk.
That thread doesn’t really go anywhere in the script by Dan Gregor, Doug Maud and Schaffer. Nor does Kane’s talk of a “Doomsday Giggle Bunker,” where entertainment will be provided by “Weird Al” Yankovic — one of a handful of celebrity cameos. The same goes for Hauser’s thankless role as Ed Hocken Jr., who plays straight man to Frank’s self-serious dimwit, when the writers remember to include him.
Even in a spoof of a police procedural, the crime under investigation needs a minimum of internal logic, but mastermind Kane’s big scheme to destroy and remake Los Angeles — and possibly the world — to his own specifications pushes the movie almost into the absurdist espionage territory of the Austin Powers series. Senior or junior, Frank Drebin is an L.A. city cop, not Ethan Hunt.
Luckily, Neeson and Anderson have enough spark to carry the film, not to mention great chemistry. I could have done without the padding of a winter cabin romantic interlude with a killer snowman — there’s a difference between dumb and annoyingly stupid — but their scenes together are the high points throughout.
Hearing Neeson express Frank’s enduring anger about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, reflect on the cultural importance of the Black Eyed Peas, berate Beth for messing up his Buffy the Vampire Slayer recordings or break down the characters on Sex and the City after someone says “Miranda rights” is a droll pleasure. His tough-guy physical comedy also scores, as he swats off armed criminals or bites off the barrel of a gun pointed at him without breaking a sweat.
There’s a moment early on in which he kneels beneath his father’s photograph on the Police Squad wall of honor and says, “I want to be just like you, but at the same time, completely different.” Which is pretty much the manifesto of anyone reviving a popular franchise after multiple decades of dormancy. The Naked Gun is at least a step up from the lifeless Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, to name one recent example.
Neeson clearly is having a blast sending up his hyperviolent screen persona of recent years, and his enjoyment is infectious up to a point. But even when the narrative momentum sputters as the movie loads up on jokes at the expense of structure or character, Neeson’s scenes with Anderson are bliss.
Continuing her renaissance after The Last Showgirl, Anderson displays impeccable comic timing, never leaning too hard into a line when her breathy throwaway delivery can land a bigger laugh. At one point, Kane asks Beth, “May I speak freely?” She replies, “I prefer English.” In another moment, Frank, curious about where she went to college, asks, “UCLA?” With only the tiniest frown of confusion, she tells him, “I see it every day. I live here.”
Dialogue like that may come from the hoariest school of comedy writing, but the charm of Anderson’s buoyant screen presence keeps it fresh and funny. Beth is a character who defends her crime-solving instincts by saying, “I write true crime stories, based on fictional crimes that I make up.” But it’s crucial to Anderson’s performance that Beth sails over every idiocy the script throws at her as if she’s making perfect sense.
I kept wishing the movie were as consistently entertaining and as sure of its footing as Anderson and Neeson are in their roles. But even if the laughs are hit-or-miss and the plotting shaky, there’s enough inspired nonsense here to keep comedy-starved theatrical audiences engaged. To the filmmakers’ credit, that includes the kind of retrograde, politically incorrect humor — the cops’ anatomical appreciations of Beth are a hoot — that makes the movie feel almost like the old Naked Gun.
The 2025 New York Film Festival has selected Bradley Cooper‘s Is This Thing On? as its closing night film.
The movie, which Cooper directed and co-wrote and stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern, will have its world premiere on Friday, Oct. 10 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The Searchlight film follows Arnett and Dern’s married couple as they divorce and embark upon midlife self-examinations, as Arnett’s character makes a dramatic career pivot to become a confessional stand-up comedian in New York City’s West Village, where he finds a new purpose and community. Inspired by the true story of British comedian John Bishop, Is This Thing On? features a screenplay co-written by Arnett and Mark Chappell with Cooper. The cast includes Andra Day, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, Sean Hayes, Peyton Manning and Amy Sedaris.
Cooper previously directed the acclaimed A Star Is Born and Maestro, the latter of which had its North American premiere as part of the 2023 New York Film Festival.
“We are honored and humbled to premiere our film at the New York Film Festival,” Cooper said in a statement. “Earlier this year we had the wonderful opportunity to shoot this story all throughout the city, so it’s very exciting to debut it on the closing evening of the festival. NYC injects an energy into every aspect of filmmaking that just can’t be replicated. I have attended many premieres at NYFF over the years and to have the support and belief in our film from [NYFF artistic director] Dennis Lim and his team is an enormous thing for us. Thank you! On behalf of Will, Laura and the entire cast and crew—we can’t wait!”
Lim added, “We are thrilled to close the festival with Bradley Cooper’s delightful third feature. Is This Thing On? is a film of many dimensions and surprises: a fond tribute to New York City’s comedy scene, a sensitive study of midlife discontent and a modern-day comedy of remarriage, pitch-perfect in its balance of humor and feeling.”
The NYFF previously announced that Luca Guadagnino’s Julia Roberts starrer After the Hunt, which also features Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield, would be its 2025 opening night film and that Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brotherwould serve as its centerpiece film.
The 63rd New York Film Festival, presented by Film at Lincoln Center, is set to run from Sept. 26-Oct. 13.
Over the past five years, seeing a straight-up comedy that puts big laughs first and foremost has become a rarity. Gone are the days when filmmakers like Judd Apatow and Adam McKay were given big summer blockbuster release dates for their star-studded comedies, and multiplex general audiences are far worse for it. There’s nothing better than sharing a fit of laughter with a big group of people. While there are blockbusters that come with a fair share of jokes, whether it’s something like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” or the video game-infused action of “Free Guy,” rarely do we get to sit down in the theater for a movie that has the explicit goal of making us laugh.
Thankfully, “The Naked Gun” has the power to change that, as long as audiences give it a chance to tickle their funny bone.
Directed by Akiva Shaffer (one-third of the “Saturday Night Live” Digital Short trio known as The Lonely Island and director of cult favorites “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and “Hot Rod”), this reboot of the beloved spoof franchise that starred Leslie Nielsen comes armed with a worthy successor in the form of “Taken” star Liam Neeson. But more importantly, it delivers a cavalcade of gut-busting jokes and gags that are both stupid and clever, riffing on classic crime thrillers and contemporary action hits while staying true to the goofy, slapstick spirit of the original franchise from “Airplane!” filmmaking trio Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker.
The result is the funniest movie of the year, one that packs so many jokes into its tight 90-minute runtime that you barely have time to catch your breath before cracking up again and again.
Frank Drebin Jr. wants to be just like his father, only completely different and original
Paramount Pictures
When it comes to spoofs like “The Naked Gun,” the story is merely an excuse for endless yucks and yaks. Even so, writers Doug Mand and Dan Gregor (along with Shaffer) have scripted a story that feels both timeless and modern, fitting right in with today’s culture in a way that will keep it relevant years, even decades from now.
Frank Drebin Jr. is on thin ice after a bank robbery turned violent has gotten Police Squad in some legal hot water, thanks to Drebin’s excessively violent way of handling the perpetrators. Things get even more complicated after a dead body turns up in a “car accident” and the victim’s sister, femme fatale Beth Davenport (a perfectly cast Pamela Anderson continuing her renaissance), comes into the station looking for answers.
When clues and suspicions turn Drebin onto billionaire tech mogul Richard Cane (Danny Huston) and his Edentech corporation, that only creates more intrigue and danger for Police Squad, especially when they learn that he intends to use a device known as the Primordial Law of Toughness (or P.L.O.T. Device) to send a digital sound signal that will take human instincts back to their most animalistic, sparking a new world apocalypse that the worthy (read: rich and male) will survive in a secret bunker, allowing them to inherit the Earth.
The new movie basically takes the plot of the original “Naked Gun” but escalates it to a larger scale by way of a little “Zootopia” and a bit of “2012” in a tech bro package that’s perfect for this era of technology and social politics. You know exactly the kind of people being lampooned here, especially when Cane gets a little too excited and cavalier about celebrating the original version of the Black Eyed Peas hit song “Let’s Get It Started.”
Of course, as Beth tries to turn over rocks to find out what happened to her brother, she can’t help but get close to Frank, and a film noir-esque romance blossoms between them in quite the silly and steamy fashion.
But again, this is just table setting that creates an opportunity for Shaffer, Mand, and Gregor to execute some of the funniest jokes we’ve seen in theaters in recent years.
Taking all the right cues from the original Naked Gun while spoofing the modern movie era
Paramount Pictures
Just like the original “Naked Gun” trilogy, this reboot takes full advantage of the spoof genre by having plenty of slapstick moments, background boffs, and visual jokes. A giant arcade claw comes in to clean up the remnants of a car crash. Drebin is handed a sparkling water in Richard Cane’s private club, and it’s just a sparkler in a glass of water. There’s also the running gag with Drebin and his partner Ed Hocken Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser as the son of George Kennedy’s character) always being handed coffee, even if they already have one in hand, leaving them to casually toss it away without care. Plus, you’ll see little background bits like cops coming out of a freezer labeled “cold case files”
The typical action scene gets infused with a potent dose of absurdity, from Drebin crushing guns with his bare hands or biting the barrel off another. Another sequence finds ripping a henchman’s arms off and using them as weapons. What’s particularly great about a lot of these moments is that they’re not drawing on timely movies where the references will be dated in a few years. The one exception is a riff on a clever beat from “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” but we won’t spoil it here. You’ll feel flashes and influences of “John Wick” and “Law & Order” too, but never to the point that it feels like a direct spoof of any of them.
PG-13 movies are rarely this funny, and it’s just naughty enough
Paramount Pictures
It’s not all innocent tomfoolery though, as there are some jokes intended for a slightly more adult audience. It never veers into overly raunchy territory, and the fact that the movie is this funny while still maintaining a PG-13 rating is kind of a miracle these days. In fact, this might be one of the funniest PG-13 movies ever made. But there are a few more risqué notes when it comes to the romance that arises between Frank and Beth, especially when lead henchman Sig Gustafson (Kevin Durand of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”) witnesses one of their dates with a sight gag that recalls another great parody comedy, “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” with just enough escalation to make it feel fresh. Another standout line alludes to a nasty but practical use for an old Bon Jovi t-shirt.
The slightly more mature content extends to the sultry but silly parlance between Frank and Beth, and it leads to a show-stopping romance sequence that pulls the rug out from the audience by shifting into an entirely different genre in the funniest way possible. It’s this approach to “The Naked Gun” that makes the franchise revival work so well. Shaffer, Gregor, and Mand knew they were never going to outdo the original franchise, so they gave it a new spin without losing what made the original movie great, a lesson that the minds behind “Happy Gilmore 2” should have taken the time to learn.
Consistently and exhaustingly funny
Paramount Pictures
But the secret sauce of the original franchise is still what makes “The Naked Gun” reboot work so well: Everyone is playing everything totally straight. The movie is funny, but no one is trying to ham it up for laughs here.
Liam Neeson is still deadly serious and also seriously funny. Though not quite reaching the greatness of the incomparable Leslie Nielsen, if only because of a handful of clumsy line deliveries and minor accent flubs, he still holds his own as the leading man in a spoof. Even Pamela Anderson’s impromptu scat singing in Richard Cane’s private club is earnest and energetic, and you can really feel her giving it her all to create a distraction. Plus, she’s got that ever so slightly melodramatic femme fatale routine down to a science. Meanwhile, like Robert Goulet and Ricardo Montalbán before him, Danny Huston is the perfect actor to play a rich bad guy without giving a wink and nod to the audience. But he still gets his own share of great laughs too, especially in the film’s climactic fight in the third act.
In fact, the entire cast is one of the best elements of “The Naked Gun” because it shows serious restraint in how to execute the comedy without overdoing it. If you’re expecting a load of cameos from familiar faces who have worked with The Lonely Island before, lower your expectations there. However, that’s what makes the tongue-in-cheek tone of “The Naked Gun” work so well. They’re not using people who you expect to be funny, other than a certain cameo that’s become a franchise tradition at this point.
It also helps that the movie has the genuine visual style and tone of all the movies it’s trying to parody. That extends from “MacGruber” director of photography Brandon Trost, who knows how to perfectly capture the style of 1980s and 1990s action movies, to score composer Lorne Balfe, who also wrote the music for “Mission: Impossible – Fallout.” There are even moments where you’ll recognize subtle orchestral cues that would easily be right at home in the Tom Cruise franchise. Yes, the entire crew is taking the movie just as seriously as a real action movie.
“The Naked Gun” is one of the most consistently and even exhaustingly funny movies in a long time, the kind of outrageous, outlandish comedy that multiplexes have been missing for years. It’s truly a revelation to have a movie where the laughs come so fast and furious. Sure, not every punchline or bit hits the mark, but you never really have time to linger on it, because the next quip, pun, farce, or nonsense will be arriving in just a few seconds. You’ll laugh so much it hurts. Oh sure, maybe not as much as landing on a bicycle with the seat missing, but it hurts!
Pete Davidson is opening up about the reality of working on lower-budget indie film sets.
The Saturday Night Live alum made an appearance on the latest installment of Hot Ones, where he was asked by host Sean Evans about his experience working alongside the legendary Bill Murray.
That’s when Davidson recalled his indie crime comedy Riff Raff, which also starred Murray. Despite getting to work with the “icon of comedy and film” on the project, he also remembered how “tough” indie films can be to make.
“The movie we did — it’s a tough one because it’s an indie, so there’s no budget and there’s not anything glamorous about it,” Davidson explained. “No one makes money, no one’s comfortable, it’s strictly like for the art.”
However, the Bupkis actor added that Murray offered him a lot of guidance to help make the indie set experience a bit easier.
“He was kind of captain and kind of like calming me down, ’cause we were shooting in November in [New] Jersey,” Davidson said. “It was like 10 degrees out and I was freaking out, and he goes, ‘We’re doing good work.’ He’s like, ‘You’re going to be very happy when you see this later.’ He goes, ‘You know, this is the hard part.’ And he just kind of Mr. Miyagi-ed me into behaving better on set. So, he’s a real pro and he’s great in everything he’s in. I had a blast.”
Riff Raff, which also starred Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Lewis Pullman, Gabrielle Union and Michael Angelo Corvino, follows a former criminal whose ordinary life is turned upside down when his old family shows up for a long-awaited reunion.
Earlier this year, Coolidge recounted her experience working with Davidson on the crime comedy. She described the actor-comedian as “one of the most unpredictable people I’ve ever met,” adding, “You can’t really get a take on him because he’s like this chameleon.”
