Variety Crowns The Naked Gun the Greatest Comedy Ever

File this under: sometimes the reboot just reminds everyone how good the original was. The new Naked Gun with Liam Neeson put the franchise back in the conversation, and now Variety has gone and named the Leslie Nielsen classic the greatest comedy ever made.

Variety just crowned a king

Variety published its The 100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time list, and The Naked Gun landed at #1. Not a shocker that nobody expected the new version to top it, but the timing is funny: the reboot got decent notices for delivering plenty of laughs, and then the original swoops in and gets called the best of the best.

• Variety places The Naked Gun (1988) at #1, ahead of heavy hitters like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Annie Hall.
• Their top ten reaches back to the classics, including Duck Soup (1930s) and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940s).
• Groundhog Day closes out the top ten, just ahead of Buster Keaton's 1924 Sherlock Jr.
• The full list covers a lot of ground, from films tied to Saturday Night Live alumni to titles like Fargo and His Girl Friday.
• There are deep cuts in the mix too, including She Done Him Wrong and The Awful Truth.

David Zucker on the reboot: not exactly a fan

Meanwhile, franchise co-creator David Zucker weighed in on the new take from Seth MacFarlane and Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer. If you have followed Zucker at all, you know he is extremely protective of the tone he and his partners created. And yep, his reaction this time was... chilly.

"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," he said. "People started copying it, like Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it."

He also took a swing at the idea that bigger is better in comedy budgets:

"You shouldn't spend too much money on comedies, and one of our rules is about technical pizzazz," he said. "Big budgets and comedy are opposites, and in the new Naked Gun, you could see that they spent a lot of money on scenes full of technical pizzazz while trying to copy our style."

So, to sum up the vibes: the Neeson version seems to have made plenty of people laugh, Variety just handed the original the GOAT crown, and Zucker is over here reminding everyone that his style runs on precision, not price tags. Honestly, all of that tracks.