Tooken

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.

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. *

Lee Turgidsen is OK. Not very funny, but he is spoofing Liam Neeson, so it works. Reno Wilson is by far a lot more entertaining when he is in a scene.

Lauren Stamile plays the ex-wife of Turgidsen and she is also fun. She is in a relationship with Reno.

The daughter does not actually get kidnapped by the Albanians. The story is about a pet store that sells dogs with bombs in their butts. Sounds dumber when you watch it on TV.

The Albanians are probably the funniest actors in this movie. This is not a bad movie, but if you are sleepy (late night) watching it, the slow pace and timing of the jokes works better.

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.