Paramount has been running a PSA-style ad for their reboot of “The Naked Gun,” with star Liam Neeson imploring the viewer to save a comedy movie by purchasing a ticket. It’s hard to believe that the big-screen comedy is now an endangered species, but everyone seems to be getting their laughs on smaller and smaller screens. Even superstar Adam Sandler’s latest efforts go straight to Netflix.

But in an increasingly fractured and isolated world, laughing with other people just might save us. The theatrical cinematic experience is important because it offers us a chance to have an emotional reaction to art in a room full of strangers and friends — laughing together, crying together, screaming together. It’s a chance to build empathy, to forge connections, and it’s far more pleasurable than typing “lol” into a comment box.

But it’s a little bit ironic that the man who might save the big-screen comedy with “The Naked Gun” also happens to be one of the pioneers of short-form video on the internet. Director and co-writer Akiva Schaffer is a member of the Lonely Island, the comedy trio (with Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone) whose breakout "SNL" digital short “Lazy Sunday” was one of the first viral videos on YouTube, ushering the video site into the mainstream.

However, the surreal, wordplay-focused humor of the Lonely Island feels like a natural outgrowth of the slapstick silliness created by Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the original “Naked Gun,” as well as “Airplane!” and “Top Secret!" That both the Lonely Island and Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker are comedy trios made up of childhood friends feels significant here somehow, and Schaffer’s point of view is perfect for this property.

While Leslie Nielsen made Detective Frank Drebin iconic, Liam Neeson now steps into the role of his son, hapless detective Frank Drebin Jr. While Neeson has been successfully plugging along in his own micro-genre of B-movie action films for years, that “The Naked Gun” offers him the chance to poke fun at his oeuvre feels like an inflection point.

His leading lady is Pamela Anderson, playing femme fatale novelist Beth Davenport. The resilient former “Baywatch” babe had her own phoenix-from-the-ashes moment with her awards-worthy turn in “The Last Showgirl,” and she’s drastically overhauled her image. A go-for-broke comedy turn seems the only natural next step.

All that context notwithstanding, happily, “The Naked Gun” delivers the funny. Schaffer and co-writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand have crafted a screenplay that is so dense with jokes, gags and references to noir tropes and cop shows that it is impossible to clock them all on a single viewing.

They throw everything at the wall to see if it sticks, and the hit rate is outstanding, with some of the more outrageous tangents making for the most memorable moments. How to describe the romantic ski weekend montage involving a possessed snowman, in what seems to be an homage to the Wham! “Last Christmas” music video? It’s impossible to convey and even harder to forget.

But for all its absurdity and reality-warping, “The Naked Gun” is also laced with a crackling cultural commentary. Frank Drebin Jr. stumbles into an apocalyptic conspiracy after connecting a bank robbery with a mysterious car crash in Malibu. The victim is an employee at Edentech, an electric vehicle company run by billionaire Richard Cane (Danny Huston). Using a purloined computer drive, Cane has plans to unleash chaos on Earth via this P.L.O.T. Device, and retreat to his bunker with the other evil billionaires while the rest of humanity tears each other apart (the scheme is eerily similar to the fantasies of Charles Manson).

Musk satire aside, there’s also a big difference of what a comedy about an inept cop means in 2025 vs.1988, and Schaffer, Gregor and Mand never let the police off the hook. There’s a gross-out sequence about Frank’s bodycam, and a joke that an internal affairs investigation is essentially a vacation. Frank might be our ostensible hero, but he’s still a dolt. That he saves the world doesn’t mean he’s not still corrupt.

The breakout star is Anderson as Beth, the sister of the slain Edentech staffer. She links up with Frank, and Anderson is game for just about anything, including an impressive scatting performance. She has a sparkling chemistry with Neeson, playing the silly stoic Frank, and the two are so committed to the bit you can’t help but root for them.

At 85 minutes of wall-to-wall humor, you can’t do much better than a good old-fashioned comedy like “The Naked Gun,” in all its raunchy, cutting and razor-sharp humor. Come on, laugh a little. It’ll do ya good.

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'THE NAKED GUN'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for crude/sexual material, violence/bloody images and brief partial nudity)

Running time: 1:25

How to watch: In theaters Aug. 1

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