By Geno McGahee
In 2008, the action genre received a huge treat when Liam Neeson had the surprise hit “TAKEN,” leading to two sequels as well as launching Neeson as the newest action star. Written and directed by John Asher, TOOKEN wasn’t nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. Granted, this film is not great, but it had every right to be worse that it was. Asher is no stranger to action films. He was in the 1993 action film SHOWDOWN. What an underrated action film that was!
Bryan Millers (Lee Tergesen) is a former CIA agent that is now a security guard and is struggling to come to terms with normal life. His wife, Lenore (Lauren Stamile) is now dating a guy named “Money Maker” (Reno Wilson) and their daughter, Kim (Laura-Leigh), isn’t happy with him either. Bryan’s approach is intrusive and he can’t shed his CIA ways. This film is a flat out spoof of TAKEN, which I prefer to the films like SCARY MOVIE that just pick elements of different films and combines them into a film. Tergesen’s imitation of Neeson was rather funny and he did rather well emulating the mannerisms.
Millers goes and purchases a dog for Kim’s birthday and after the first two dogs die, he gets a third, but when he finds out that his daughter may have a horny boyfriend, Jamie (Cameron Von Hoy), he gets enraged. His daughter goes off on him and now Miller is the owner of the dog, but things get strange when he gets home. After taking some Viagra, he struggles to get an erection until he sees animals mating. Then he is so proud of having an erection that he dances around the room and presents it to his dog. The dog explodes and his building burns down, leading to a mystery and a group of bad guys to take down.
Brownfinger (Margaret Cho) is the leader of his group and they kidnap Lenore, Bryan and Bryan’s mother, Edna (Joyce Bulifant), and he reveals his wicked plan, which includes putting bombs in the asses of dogs because when he was young, he had his dog taken away from him. Bryan calls upon his daughter to save him and his wife and mother, taking some of the TAKEN 2 storyline and we also have some NON-STOP references here. Kim saves her father and then we have a big showdown which was hilariously absurd. Watching Brownfinger getting impaled made watching this movie worth it.
TOOKEN is hit and miss with its humor. It relies on some of the stupid humor that THE NAKED GUN would use. It wasn’t funny then. It’s not funny now. For instance, Bryan says “Bingo” and then picks up a Bingo card up. Not funny. Some of the humor is laugh out loud funny, but those occurrences are few and far between. Margaret Cho was very funny in her role and her many years of standup comedy have obviously helped her. From the moment she’s on the screen, she’s funny.
As a huge fan of TAKEN, I appreciated what Asher attempted with TOOKEN, but it quickly becomes forgettable. If you like TAKEN, it’s worth a watch, but overall it’s not great. It’s got its moments, but it doesn’t have enough of them.
Rating: 4.5/10
