WRONGFULLY ACCUSED (Warner Bros.) Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Richard Crenna, Melinda McGraw, Kelly LeBrock, Aaron Pearl, Michael York. Screenplay: Pat Proft. Producers: Pat Proft, James G. Robinson and Bernd Eichinger. Director: Pat Proft. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (sexual innuendo, profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
"Leslie Nielsen _is_ Leslie Nielsen" reads a tongue-in-cheek opening credit that opens WRONGFULLY ACCUSED, and no irony could be more bitter. Once upon a time Nielsen was a B-movie dramatic actor who re-invented himself as a deadpan comedian thanks to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team, who cast him in AIRPLANE! and their television series "Police Squad!" Those successes led to three NAKED GUN films based on "Police Squad!", which in turn led to SPY HARD and MR. MAGOO. The one-time serious actor who used to play straight man so successfully against absurdist parody turned into a self-parody, mugging ever more shamelessly as he became typecast as the prat-falling dope.
You can expect more of the same -- Leslie Nielsen once again _as_ Leslie Nielsen -- in WRONGFULLY ACCUSED, the latest in a seemingly endless string of films this summer from ZAZ alumni. This one, written and directed by HOT SHOTS! and NAKED GUN co-scribe Pat Proft, casts Nielsen as Ryan Harrison, internationally renowned "Lord of the Violin." Seduced by a slinky temptress (Kelly LeBrock), Harrison ends up accused of the murder of millionaire Hibbing Goodhue (Michael York, looking like a Madame Tussaud figure of himself). He escapes, he runs, he's pursued by a single-minded law-enforcement agent (Richard Crenna), he searches for a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed man (Aaron Pearl), yada yada yada.
I don't know whether the strained comedy of WRONGFULLY ACCUSED would have seemed any fresher if it hadn't come hard on the heels of MAFIA! and BASEKETBALL, but it certainly doesn't help. Proft tries to keep the gags coming fast enough to obscure the tedium -- perhaps believing he can convince an audience that a hundred lame jokes add up to one decent one -- but the gags are worse than uninspired. They're uninspired and redundant, the kind of stuff that makes you suspect Proft and Jim Abrahams were sitting in a room together as they were hashing out this film and MAFIA!, respectively. How else to explain the fact that both films include a shot of a man leaving a lipstick print from a kiss, and a computer generated tongue emerging from someone's ear, and shots at Michael Flatley?
Those re-cycled gags are enough to make WRONGFULLY ACCUSED feel ridiculously tired. Nielsen's performance merely compounds the misery. He has become such a flashing red light for self-defeating satire that he simply can't play the role he once played: the slack-faced observer of anarchy. Directors have decided it's easier to get the audience to laugh at Nielsen than it is to write anything funny to which he can react...or, more appropriately, _not_ react. WRONGFULLY ACCUSED features Nielsen at his least appealing, throwing out rolled eyes, grimaces and misguided reaction takes by the truckload. Instead of providing an incongruous presence that contributes to the humor, he becomes a vaguely pathetic aging class clown.
I realize that subtlety has never been the forte of genre parody, but there are scattered moments when WRONGFULLY ACCUSED appears to have a decent idea that's not head-smackingly obvious. The best laugh, one I'm sure was unintentional, comes from the 30-second cameo by Sandra Bernhard which belies her prominent featuring in the credits. It seems like a clever jab at Julianne Moore's cutting-room-floor performance in THE FUGITIVE, especially when Nielsen refers to getting information from Bernhard's character in a scene we never see. It's probably too much to expect that level of insider satire to be sustained, especially when it's so much easier to have Nielsen bang his head on a low bridge while standing on the bow of the Titanic. That's about the level of humor you can expect when a film's number one comedic weapon is Leslie Nielsen _as_ Leslie Nielsen.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Nielsen ratings: 2.
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