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.

For a spoof they have gotten Liam Neeson's accent down, pretty good impersonator of Famke Janssen and also a heavily sexualized version of the daughter character. Much of the humors revolve around penis joke while the production has heavy resemblance with sleazy music video. Not all of them are misfire, there's some degree of slight entertainment, mainly because the original material from Taken was already a bit far-fetched, so the movie predictably plays it to their advantage.

Story replicates Taken franchise and recent works of Liam Neeson. It includes a few stereotypical characters, which are awkwardly shoehorned for dirty jokes. The lead does have peculiar accent which forcefully reminds audiences of Liam Neeson. Casting department at least delivers a good Famke Janssen lookalike for good measure. Others are typical extra for bad guys and eye-catching attractive girls.

Practically any girl character is exposed to some type of corny dirty puns or outright crude gag concerning indecent act. However, the massive bulk of the joke is on Neeson's double. There are a few good ones which have just enough self-deprecation to be amusing. Others are expected brash moments of spoof movie which are inelegant, cringe-worthy and a few freakish practical effects. These things have fifty-fifty chance to entertain depend on your expectation and tolerance.

It's all sort of juvenile and gross content one might expect from spoof, but at least it capitalizes on its intended sources for a few chuckles.

Wow, this movie is uneven.. There is some quite good writing mixed with, and hidden behind, dumb jokes. In one moment it can be genuinely funny, then the next is not funny at all. But it's general it's not really that bad. Some parts are kind of clever, just a shame it's not more consistent.

The guy sounds like Liam Neeson playing Bryan Mills. He doesn't look much like him. The woman however looks kind of like Famke Jansson playing the wife. It's not much to say about the acting, it's OK.

Unfortunately there is little to no action here. Not much gun-play, not much fighting. I really wish they would have had some more action, it being a spoof of Taken (an excellent action movie btw), but no.

Would be excellent to parody the action of Taken, with one guy killing a whole army, but we get no such thing. That's a shame!

Like I said, there are some good parts, but there are some unfunny, sucky parts. I have seen a lot worse, though!

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. *

For a spoof movie there should be little to expect. Spoofing the Taken series is something which surprisingly took a while to be made (Tooken was released after Taken 3- so they waited until the Taken franchise was complete). With the instant success of the first Taken film, one would have expected a spoof film have been made immediately.

This film is quite short in runtime which benefits it as they ensure it doesn't drag on. Some clever gags, the obvious and expected over the top humor, a lot more gross humor (dick jokes) than expected, cheap one liners and innuendoes.

The lead actor impersonating Liam Neeson does a great job, the wife has a resemblance to the Taken wife of Lenore and for some reason the daughter is more overly specialized here.

Don't expect anything great but in comparison to other spoof films such as Epic Movie or Disaster Movie, Tooken is a clear step above. Reason being, there is a consistency in plot and it doesn't seem like a bunch of random scenes sketched together. It has its moments, some things work while some fall flat. Which was expected.