Tooken

Let me start by saying that I started hating spoof movies around the time epic movie and date movie came out. In fact the creators of those movies are making a spoof of Taken as well. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3749816/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_1

It will likely be terrible but this movie is just a fun ride. There isn't as much toilet humor or gross out humor as I expected. Has some really funny jokes and creative ideas. Actually has a half decent budget and isn't filmed over a long weekend like a Seltzer spoof. This movie was already down voted before it even came out of the studio. I really don't think that's fair since everyone who gave this a 1 probably never even seen it. But then again that's IMDb for you. All in all I didn't bust a gut laughing, but at least I didn't pop a vessel in my head. Like one would do during an Aaron Seltzer movie.

I love to see all the negative reviews of people expecting a big budget movie.

Go into it expecting a low budget spoof, and this movie is awesome.

It's very creative, jokes are funny and not just low-class humor, and the story is pretty good for a spoof movie.

On a side note, voting 1 star because you dislike a movie (or 10 because you like it) only serves to skew the results.

It shows that IMDb is now ruled by fan boys and haters instead of actual reviewers.

This movie was much better than any recent spoofs. 6/10.

Bryan Millers is a former CIA agent, now a security guard at a pet store. He still is in love with is ex-wife Lenore who by now is involved with a black former porn actor. Bryan has a teenage daughter who's eager to lose her virginity, something he's not about to let happen. He's also interested in trying the latest ED medication, even though as far as we can tell, he doesn't have a woman.

One night at work he sees a bunch of Albanians loading explosives. He confronts them and next day he walks up to the pet store HQ to again confront the gangsters. We learn that behind them is some sinister figure.

It takes a while but eventually Bryan, his mom--also a former CIA agent, and Lenore get "taken". We learn more about the sinister boss and what he's up to. In the meantime the daughter and Lenore's guy will have to rescue them and Bryan will have to confront the bad guy.

The Taken franchise, and for that matter all Liam Neeson movies, are ideal material for a parody. And initially it looks like Tooken will to just that. This Bryan endlessly brags about his special skills but just like the other Bryan rarely displays the alleged skills. For some reason, Mills' lame friends don't make an appearance here.

Unfortunately, Tooken instead of being a "serious" parody quickly descends into adolescent territory with countless gross moments, that wouldn't be funny even to teenagers. I counted four instances that made me chuckle but there wasn't any particularly funny scene or line. Tooken could have ridiculed the over the top violence, Mills' absurd obsession with his ex, the annoying daughter. But it doesn't. It comes across more like a really poor comedy that was quickly adapted into a Taken scenario.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

In this send up of the Taken films, the middle aged Irish hero has come down in the world from working for the CIA, and everything around him, from his ex-wife to his daughter's cherry, seems to be going away. But when some Albanian gangsters hatch a plot to put explosive devices in the local puppies, including his beloved own, he's pushed too far and swears to bring them down.

If I had been a bigger fan of the Taken franchise this ultra low budget misfire is sending up, I might have been able to relate to it a little better, and enjoyed it maybe a little more, but that's a big gamble. It begs the retrospective question, if the script had such potential in the first place, why a bigger studio didn't snap it up? It pulls out all the gross out, juvenile stops it can, but I've never seen anything so unfunny in quite a while, with an incoherent, messy plot that makes it even harder to endure. If the script had been better written, and some better finance had been behind it, it could have been on to something, but as it is, it's just hopeless. Even the title is pants. *

I'm not really a fan of spoof flicks in general, I hate it when they like with the cases of Scary Movie simply reenact various scenes that aren't hardly connected together and make them stupid and think that's gonna make a good movie (often spoiling movies carelessly in the process)

But this was actually fairly amusing and it does tell a fairly coherent story, even though of course it strays away from time to time, and it's not a complete rip off (even though yeah they do reference scenes from the Taken movies fairly often)

Not saying that this is a "good" movie, but it was amusing, a lot of sex jokes though, A LOT, but I didn't mind personally

Also I'd like to add that even though the movie looks star-studded based on the credits, all celebs like Ethan Suplee, Lukas Haas, Donnie Whalberg, Akon, Jenny McCarthy barely have 10 seconds cameos so yeah don't expect more than that from them

Lee Tergessen from HBO's OZ have the lead as 'Liam Neeson' and Maggie Cho plays a baddie, other than that and the occasional 10 second cameo the roles are played by unknowns... Some might recognize Reno Wilson from some TV-series but hardly a known name, but he's fun as 'Money Maker'