Remember those sensational movie parodies that MAD magazine used to churn out in almost every issue? Find any popular movie or epic-length film, and MAD was likely to have a gut-busting satirical take on it. The movies offered us one fantastic parody, too: Airplane! which combined Zero Hour and the Airport series into one memorably hilarious gem. But most more modern parodies sacrifice wit for vulgarity and invention for gross-out cheapness. Tooken, John Asher’s spoof of the first two films in the Taken franchise, has a few good bits surrounded by a whole lot dead weight.
Studio: Cinedigm
Distributed By: N/A
Video Resolution and Encode: 480P/MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audio: English 5.1 DD
Subtitles: English SDH
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 Hr. 21 Min.
Package Includes: DVD
Amaray case in a slipcoverDisc Type: DVD-9 (dual layer)
Region: 1
Release Date: 07/07/2015
MSRP: $14.93
The Production Rating: 2.5/5
After leaving his job as a highly skilled CIA agent, Bryan Millers (Lee Tergesen) has taken a job as a mall security cop, a vocation which doesn’t exactly test his mettle. But upsetting events in his life slap him into action when he finds that both his ex-wife Lenore (Lauren Stamile) and daughter Kim (Laura-Leigh) are about to be taken from him, not by foreign mercenaries but by new respective boy friends: ex-porn star Money Maker (Reno Wilson) for Lenore and a college student (Cameron Van Hoy) for Kim. While dealing over-aggressively with the threats to the ladies in his family, Bryan stumbles onto an upcoming terrorist attack to be staged by Afghan rebel Dalmat (Ray Abruzzo) and his nefarious leader Brown Finger (Margaret Cho).
Co-writers Cameron Van Hoy (who also plays Kim’s love interest) and John Asher (who also directed) have plucked a few key bits of business from the first two Taken films (the gravelly voiced, leather jacketed-protagonist who promises to hunt down his adversaries who have his child, his wife, or something of value) but really don’t develop their material to milk the maximum amount of humor by stretching the formerly dramatic set-ups and complications and turning them into an extended farcical scenario. Instead they fall back on tired jokes involving vomit, snot, and penises (lots of those jokes) and often veer far away from the genre they’re supposedly satirizing, the material basically being sufficient for a ten-minute Saturday Night Live sketch that’s now been stretched to 80 minutes. There are a couple of inventive quirks in the film: the villains speak in accented English while subtitles carry the words translated into Afghani, Brown Finger’s method for inflicting terror on the United States gives his name a double meaning that is momentarily amusing (along with his gracious offer of Tabs for his guests). But bringing in Bryan’s ex-CIA mother (the always reliable Joyce Bulifant) with her potty mouth and post-menopausal fanaticism about sex are pretty desperate ploys for cheap laughs that often leave the actress without a laugh to show for all her efforts.
Lee Tergesen has always been an undervalued actor. Among the best performers on HBO’s sensational Oz and an actor whose charisma and presence almost stole the remake of Shaft out from under Samuel L. Jackson’s nose, his comic sensibilities are only given brief moments to shine here. During a few brief bits of almost total nudity, he shows us a buff body that could have made him a believable comic action hero if the script had amped up the action portions of the story and let him show his stuff. But he’s basically underused in that domain and only has the stereotypical wide-eyed protective parent shtick to fall back on. As in the real Taken films, the wife and daughter roles are victim parts that don’t require much of the actors playing them, so likewise Lauren Stamile and Laura-Leigh here spend the film either exasperated with Bryan or grateful to him for his fumbling expertise. Margaret Cho playing a male role isn’t used wisely either, but she makes much out of little and earns a few laughs. Reno Wilson plays the jive-talking man-on-the-make predictably, but Ray Abruzzo as Brown Finger’s second-in-command has a good moment or two. And among the cameos sprinkled through the film are brief moments with Donnie Wahlberg, Jenny McCarthy, Akon, Ethan Suplee, and Lukas Haas.
Video Rating: 4.5/5 3D Rating: NA
The film’s aspect ratio of 2.40:1 is faithfully rendered in this sharp and appealing transfer which is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions. Color is bright and solid, and the skin tones are believable and appealing. Sharpness is very good revealing more detail than one might expect from standard definition. Black levels are moderately rich while contrast has been consistently applied. The movie has been divided into 8 chapters.
Audio Rating: 4/5
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is not quite as active as a full-out action movie would be, but there’s just enough surround presence to use the rear channels engagingly. Dialogue has been well recorded and has been placed in the center channel, while the music gets a nice spread through the fronts and rears.
Special Features Rating: 2.5/5
Tooken Revealed (16:02): director John Asher and actors Lee Tergesen, Lauren Stamile, Reno Wilson, Laura-Leigh, Cameron Van Hoy, Margaret Cho, and Ray Abruzzo talk about the plot and the characters in the film and show some behind-the-scenes preparations to get filming underway.
Cribs Spoof (4:49): actor Reno Wilson takes the viewer on a brief tour of the set that represents his home and office in the movie while doing some improvisation in character as Money Maker.
Theatrical Trailer (1:38)
Deleted/Extended Scenes: four scenes which must be chosen individually: “Hospital” (1:27), “Brown Finger” (7:01), “Basement Breakout” (3:14), and “Swordfight” (4:43).
Overall Rating: 2.5/5
Good for a few mild laughs especially if one is familiar with the Taken film franchise, Tooken presents some very good actors doing what they can to salvage substandard comedy material. At least the DVD looks and sounds very good for those who are curious to check it out.
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
Support HTF when you buy this title:
