kicked off a franchise of its own, resulted in a swath of far worse copycats from two of the film’s co-writers, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Disaster Movie,” “Vampires Suck,” and more all tried to cash-in on spoofing popular blockbusters of the time, but the comedy left plenty to be desired, and the poor reception essentially killed the greatness and the appeal of spoof comedy — at least for a little while.
Thankfully, there have still been bright spots in the years since, such as the music biopic-skewering “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” which has completely eviscerated the tropes of biographical movies that came in the wake of “Walk the Line” and “Ray.” In addition, David Wain’s cult favorite “They Came Together” delivered a perfect parody of romantic comedies like “You’ve Got Mail.” Both proved that with the right talent in front of and behind the camera, the spoof can still bring big laughs.
That brings us to 2025’s “The Naked Gun,” a reboot of the aforementioned spoof franchise that starred Leslie Nielsen as Detective Sergeant Frank Drebin. Adapted from the comedy series “Police Squad!,” the original film series followed Drebin across three movies as he got caught up in criminal intrigue and silly situations, most of which he hilariously stumbled through with many mishaps. “The Naked Gun” and the TV series that preceded it used classic shows like “M Squad” and “Dragnet” and films like the “Dirty Harry” movies as the source of their inspiration, but how would “The Naked Gun” work for today’s audiences who might be far less familiar with those increasingly aged titles?
