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It’s been 31 years since Leslie Nielsen played bumbling police detective Frank Drebin, a franchise that’s been more successful as a feature film than the TV series, Police Squad, from which it derived from; Police Squad lasted six episodes in the spring of 1982. In that time the comedy stylings of the Zucker/Abrahams team has been analyzed and cited as the type of humor “that can’t be done today.” Or, that is until Popstar director Akiva Schaffer decided to redo The Naked Gun today. With a solid and game cast led by a pitch perfect Liam Neeson, The Naked Gun is a far better movie than it has any right to be.

An opening bank robbery introduces audiences to Frank Drebin, Jr. (Neeson), a member of the Police Squad desperate to make his late father proud. But the bank robbery ends up holding far more dastardly implications, including murder. While investigating the mysterious death of a man named Simon Davenport, Frank meets and falls for Simon’s sister Beth (Pamela Anderson), a mystery writer determined to find her brother’s killer. The two team up to stop the evil tech genius Richard Cane (Danny Huston) and the Plot D.E.V.I.C.E that threatens to undo humanity.

What works in The Naked Gun’s favor is its script, credited to Schaffer, Doug Mand and Dan Gregor. As we learn from Frank’s pitch-perfect noir narration, he’s a man looking for purpose in his life and misses the old days where things like Miranda Rights and police brutality weren’t acknowledged. Much like Drebin, how does a Naked Gun movie find humor in the police in today’s landscape? The answer is in constantly poking fun at police movies themselves. Frank’s captain, Chief Davis (a fantastic CCH Pounder), is simultaneously trying to ignore what Frank’s doing and calling him out on it.

Neeson, known for his string of hard-hitting action films, plays on that same established persona. He wants to beat the crap out of the bad guys and can’t understand why he’s not being celebrated for it. It’s revealed he arrested everyone at a McDonald’s over “freedom fries.” Frank isn’t a bad cop, just a highly stupid one. By relying less on what’s popular and more the timeliness of the noir and detective story, it prevents The Naked Gun from immediately feeling dated. If anything there’s a fun blending of the contemporary with Frank being at least 15 years behind. A scene involving his TiVo is particularly funny.

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The humor in The Naked Gun skews to the broad, silly and scatalogical, which isn’t a detriment if that’s what you’re looking for. The movie’s PG-13 rating keeps the humor less reliant on foul language and more the foulness of farts and diarrhea. Neeson understands how to play the character for peak impact. His deadpan expressions are perfect when Drebin needs to be serious, but he also has a childish innocence to him, particularly when talking about his “daddy,” the late Frank Drebin played by Leslie Nielsen. Him saying the word “man’s laughter” when he means manslaughter couldn’t have worked with a different actor. The script lets him rely more on the dialogue than the situations, although Neeson is in several awkward situations—the schoolgirl outfit in the trailer is only a prelude to a hilarious dialogue exchange involving Frank and his lack of pants.

Like any good spoof movie the film draws a fair amount from the likes of contemporary action films like Mission: Impossible series (face ripping!). But what the screenwriters are best at is borrowing from timeless classics. A dialogue exchange between Beth and Frank about hot dogs and stuffing turkeys is a direct riff on an exchange found in Double Indemnity. And a later attempt to fool one of Cane’s henchmen, involving a faux hospital, feels like it might be a reference to the amazing James Garner movie 36 Hours (but seems more like another M:I reference). The requisite cop humor is also on display, like poking fun at how much coffee they drink. So much so that cups are being handed to them even in the air.

But the true revelation might be Pamela Anderson as girl Friday, Beth Davenport. Though there’s a clear honeypot angle to her—Drebin describes her as possessing “a bottom that would make a toilet beg for the brown”—the script never objectifies her or makes her the butt of the joke. The humor is derived from her belief that a wig and a gun will allow her to infiltrate places. Anderson plays the character as determined, if a bit daffy—like a Jean Arthur or Audrey Totter. Like Neeson, she also has a way with the script’s dialogue. When Frank asks her she went to “UCLA” her response is “I see it every day. I live here.” And to hear her do some jazz scatting…give this woman her flowers.

The plot itself is completely incidental, so much so that the MacGuffin they’re searching for is literally named “Plot Device” and really is there to give some big third act conflict. Huston’s Richard Cane is another Musk-esque tech bro (which we’ve already seen once this year in M3GAN 2.0. Three officially makes it a trend). It’s definitely worthwhile to see the usually serious Huston play comedy, but there’s not much to the character. Even his tech bro conceit is abandoned pretty quickly.

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The Naked Gun is silly, dumb and inoffensive. It’s neither good or bad but fits comfortably in the mediocre category. It has some funny one-liners and is enjoyable in the moment, but it’s hard to fathom we’ll see any future installments starring Neeson’s Drebin. Get a drink and watch this with some friends and you’ll have a decent 90 minutes.

Grade: C-

The Naked Gun hits theaters Friday.

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