Comedy Legend Disses Liam Neeson’s ‘Naked Gun’ Sequel

Not everyone was happy with the recent reboot of The Naked Gun starring Liam Neeson.

Despite critical and commercial success when it released earlier this year, one director of the original was displeased with the reboot. David Zucker, one-third of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (or ZAZ) comedy trio that made Airplane! and the first three Naked Gun films, voiced his displease with the reboot.

“My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style—and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently,” he told a reporter at Woman’s World. “People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.” (It should be noted that MacFarlane only produced the film; Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer actually directed and co-wrote the reboot.)

In his view, a big problem with the new movie was how big-budget it was, noting that ZAZ had “a certain method to the madness” with all of their comedies, and that the trio “had our 15 rules, and I’m teaching them in the hopes that if anybody tries to do a movie like this again, they’ll do it right.”

“You shouldn’t spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz,” he continued. “Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style.”

Despite Zucker’s misgivings, the new version of The Naked Gun was a success by all measures. Critics loved it for bringing slapstick comedy back to theaters, and so did audiences: it grossed over $100 million in theaters when it released this past August.

The Naked Gun is streaming now on Paramount+.