Tooken

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.

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.

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'

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.