Wrongfully Accused (1998)

reviewed by
Jamie Peck


WRONGFULLY ACCUSED Reviewed by Jamie Peck


Rating: *1/2 (out of ****) Warner Bros. / 1:26 / 1998 / PG-13 (language, sexual/crude humor, comic violence) Cast: Leslie Nielsen; Richard Crenna; Kelly Le Brock; Melinda McGraw; Michael York; Aaron Pearl; Sandra Bernhard Director: Pat Proft Screenplay: Pat Proft
There are those of us who think of Leslie Nielsen as the bumbling, hapless straight man from the hysterical "Naked Gun" films, crack an immediate smile and forgive him of whatever wavering movie spoof he's committed himself to starring in since. The wavering movie spoofs, however, are less forgivable. To be fair, "Wrongfully Accused," the send-up in question and Nielsen's third parody since the last "Gun," isn't quite as excruciatingly humorless as his "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" or "Spy Hard," which is a mighty good thing. Nielsen is still in tip-top comedic form, able as ever to deadpan his way through even the most horrible puns, but he really needs a screenplay that plays off his talents instead of relying on them, and he needs one very soon.

"Wrongfully Accused" meshes together the premises of "The Fugitive" and "Patriot Games," casting its always game star as Ryan Harrison (get it?), a master violinist who is drawn into an affair with a married temptress (Kelly Le Brock). She, however, sets Harrison up to take the rap for the murder of her husband (Michael York) - a crime actually committed by a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed man (Aaron Pearl). Harrison is arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death, but escapes from a prison bus, of course, and then is pursued by a determined U.S. marshal named Fergus Falls (Richard Crenna, unnecessarily riffing off of Tommy Lee Jones' already smirky Oscar-winning role). There's also a mystery brunette (Melinda McGraw) and an assassination subplot involving the U.N. Secretary General, but like any of it matters.

"Wrongfully Accused" gets off to an assured start, with an in-concert Nielsen, touted "Lord of the Violin" by bare-chested posters, pulling a Jimi Hendrix on his musical instrument as hundreds of tuxedo-clad mosh in front of the stage. Nice touch. Most of the scenes that follow, however, never top the opener. (Hysterical exceptions: the Mentos and "Baywatch" goofs.) Movie parodies are crammed in at an almost-subliminal rate, but most are empty. When a giant snake lunges onto the screen and snatches a cast member a la "Anaconda" or baseball players disappear into a "Field of Dreams"-esque cornfield, there's really nothing to laugh at. Other moments, like an interlude in a fishing shop, are so unfocused that you're not sure what you're supposed to be laughing at.

There seem to be more cheap references than frenzied send-ups here, so it's possible that director/writer Pat Proft, by bombarding the viewer with a careless mixture of the two, guarantees something is sure to stick. And what does stick sticks well, particularly the jabs at genre conventions like stylized flashbacks and hard-boiled dialogue, what those "Naked Gun"s (which Proft collaborated on) did great; these bits are so on-target that they allow you to remember "Wrongfully Accused" as an almost-halfway-there spoof instead of a lame-brained failure. The movie might have been cursed to begin with, opening fast on the heels of "Mafia!", from Proft colleague Jim Abrahams, and "BASEketball," from Proft colleague David Zucker, but it's a strong possibility that nobody is going to be accusing "Wrongfully Accused" of being Nielsen's funniest.


© 1998 Jamie Peck E-mail: jpeck1@gl.umbc.edu Visit The Reel Deal Online: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~jpeck1/ "The plot of ‘Jungle 2 Jungle' has been removed from a French film called ‘Little Indian, Big City.' The operation was a failure and the patient dies." -Roger Ebert on "Jungle 2 Jungle"


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