Tooken

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.

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.

They could've done a funny movie. Let's face it, each sequel to Taken became more and more of a spoof of itself, so this movie wasn't necessary. With that said. This movie sucked.

I do not recommend. I gave this a 1-star rating, and it's not a solid one-star. More like 1/10 of 1-star. Yes, folks, it was that bad. Do not watch this expecting a funny take on the Taken series. If you want a good spoof on a movie, "The Three Musketeers" with Kiefer Sutherland was good. "Hot Shots, Part Deux" was fun. "Tooken" sucks so much, it puts porn stars to shame. Again, yes, it was that bad. If you watch this, don't say you weren't warned.

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'