“Because we’re all fucked. And we need a few giggles,” he told Variety Monday at the movie’s New York City premiere. He delivered the line in the deadpan style of his on-screen persona, Frank Drebin Jr., the biological (and spiritual) heir to Leslie Nielsen’s iconic police lieutenant. The character last graced the big screen in 1994.

Liam Neeson almost works as a Drebin for a new, coarser, meaner age, and he has no problem suggesting a surly, disgruntled son of the cop immortalized by Leslie Nielsen in the short-lived 1982 TV series “Police Squad!

Liam Neeson is Leslie Nielsen's son in the new "The Naked Gun" movie, a safe and familiar but welcome throwback.