In an era when it seems every movie is destined to be rebooted, one franchise that was surprising to see return was The Naked Gun. Spoof movies in general have seemed like a thing of the past, and The Naked Gun was such an artifact of its time, with star Leslie Nielsen and creators Jim Abrams and David and Jerry Zucker, that it seemed impossible anybody would try to do that again.
And yet it happened. A new The Naked Gun movie arrived on the 2025 movie schedule from producer Seth MacFarlane, director Akiva Schaffer and star Liam Neeson. For the most part, it seems most liked it. Our own Naked Gun review was solid, and many other critics agreed. The film also got a decent box office return at a time when that is far from a sure thing. However, one person who apparently didn’t care for it is David Zucker, who recently told Woman’s World…
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. People started copying it, like [producer] Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.
While I’m not sure fans would say the new Naked Gun “totally” missed it, many critics felt that, while the new film was good, it certainly wasn’t quite the same. Some explained that the new Naked Gun not trying to match the original perfectly was a good thing because it likely would have failed. Zucker, however, feels that writer and producer Seth MacFarlane missed some fundamental elements in what makes spoof movies work.
The knowledge that David Zucker had to make spoof movies work came from years of making them and creating a collection of rules that helped make the jokes work. Zucker has recorded an online class for MasterClass called A Crash Course In Spoof Comedy, which will teach people those rules so that future spoof movies get it right. He continued…
We 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.
He doesn’t go into what most of these rules are, beyond the first, which was that every joke needs a straight man, and the last being that “there are no rules.” I suppose if you pay for the MasterClass, you can learn them all and perhaps begin to see where the new Naked Gun went wrong in Zucker’s eyes.
There is at least one spoof movie that might benefit from taking the MasterClass. While it’s unclear if we might see any Naked Gun sequels with Liam Neeson, there is a new Scary Movie in development. David Zucker himself directed two entries in that franchise.
Zucker’s words are a bit surprising if only because he previously said he had no intention of seeing the new Naked Gun. He was supportive of the film itself, but said he just wasn’t interested in seeing somebody else’s take on his work. It seems he broke that rule.