David Zucker Just Got Surprising Ammunition For His War On The New 'Naked Gun'

According to prominent members of the entertainment media, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is the best comedy film of all time. We have an idea of what David Zucker might pick for the worst one.

The parody filmmaking legend Zucker recently trashed the fourth Naked Gun film starring Liam Neeson for supposedly ripping off his comedy style while falling victim to the money-grabbing, style-over-substance approach to filmmaking that took over Hollywood around the time when Zucker’s career slowed down. Zucker’s main points in his criticism seemed to suggest that he never actually watched The Naked Gun (2025), but, nevertheless, Zucker felt so insulted by the new filmmakers’ decision not to use his script for the film – or involve him in its making at all – that he launched a media campaign decrying the sequel before ever laying eyes on it.

When Zucker sees that his original Naked Gun film topped Variety's new list “The 100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time,” he'll have some fresh talking points when next he decides to publicly attack Akiva Schaffer's sequel – well, either that, or he'll yell at Variety for stealing his movie title to head one of their list entries.

“The glory of The Naked Gun is that it’s a shamelessly uninhibited, anarchically observational drive-by comedy that will make fun of anything: global autocrats, stodgy film noir dialogue, safe sex, a professional baseball game, food left in the refrigerator for too long,” Variety wrote of their top pick in the expansive list of the greatest comedy movies ever.

Said the outlet of the film's makers, “ZAZ first got famous for Airplane! (1980), but here, in their genius mélange of deconstructed movie clichés and mad puns, not to mention the mother of all satirical love montages (set to Herman’s Hermits’ ‘Something Good’), they launched the media-wise parody as big-screen comedy art form of its time, creating a kind of modernistic Marx Brothers movie that tickles us with a spirit so funny it’s timeless.”

Now, whether or not the first Naked Gun film deserves to be listed above every other attempt at big-screen humor is, of course, a subjective matter. The decision to exclude any movie containing either John Candy or Chris Farley from the top 100 is the prerogative of Variety and the move to pick The Naked Gun, out of all of Zucker's work, as the top choice is similarly their call to make. 

But it is ironic that Zucker, who has complained on Fox News that wokeness killed comedy, can't see that the best comedy this year, the one born from his #1 comedy, fully disabuses that notion.