Like everyone else my age, I am irrationally protective of the pop culture touchstones I grew up with. Just last week, I saw a trailer for a “Running Man” remake — starring Glen Powell in the role originally played by Arnold Schwarzenegger — and had to sit down for a moment to process my anger. I bemoan all reboots and remakes because I want the movies of my youth to be MINE, and I hate the idea of some broccoli cut Zoomer thinking that they could improve on things I already consider to be perfect, even if they weren’t. If anyone dares to even THINK of remaking “Spies Like Us,” I’ll throw them off of a mountaintop.

So you understand why I was so lukewarm on the idea of Paramount rebooting the “Naked Gun” spoof franchise. The original star of that film, Leslie Nielsen, died in 2010. The masterminds behind it — Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker — no longer make movies together anymore, with Abrahams dying last year. Furthermore, Hollywood stopped investing in big screen comedies years ago because they didn’t make enough overseas box office profit. That left comedy in the hands of dips—t streamers, Netflix-backed Sandler family cookouts, and a parade of Friedberg/Seltzer gag movies (remember “Meet The Spartans”? I’ll kick you in the face if you do) that took the “Airplane”-“Naked Gun” spoof formula and replicated it in the absolute laziest manner possible. Would you trust people like this with your movie babies? You would not.

That’s why I didn’t trust Paramount to revive “The Naked Gun” using any sort of wit, intelligence or originality. The fact that sentient “I Love the 80s” episode Seth MacFarlane was an executive producer on this new one only made me recoil further. But SFGATE employs me as a film critic from time to time, which means that I’ve had to volunteer myself as tribute to some of the worst dogs—t ever put onto celluloid. I’m also sick of fighting against the remake industrial complex. It’s a lost cause, and this new “Gun” was only an hour and a half long. I figured that I could deal. Can you? Well now, it’s time to subject the movie to my patented Dad Movie Test, to see if you should get ready to laugh, or to storm the Paramount lot with pitchforks at the ready. Let’s begin.

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What is “The Naked Gun”?

Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker made the original movie in 1988, adapting it from their own spoof TV........

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