Wrongfully Accused
Leslie Nielsen stars in Wrongfully Accused, a belated parody of The Fugitive, as an acclaimed violinist who, as the title would suggest, is wrongfully accused of murder. Written and directed by über-hack and some-time Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker associate Pat Proft (The Naked Gun, High School High, Mr. Magoo), Wrongfully Accused is the latest in a long line of excruciatingly bad slapstick farces capitalizing on Nielsen's inexplicable second career as a silver-haired funnyman. Though Nielsen was funny in Airplane!, Police Squad!, and the first Naked Gun movie, he wasn't funny because he was some sort of gifted physical comedian; he was funny because the writing was good, and because the work was so deadpan that it didn't require him to mug and contort and ham it up like a latter-day Fatty Arbuckle. Wrongfully Accused, on the other hand, isn't the least bit deadpan. It's the sort of over-the-top slapstick-fest in which gags are telegraphed, delivered without subtlety, repeated, followed with a wacky sound effect, and then repeated once more for good measure. And while Nielsen's work with ZAZ contained some bad gags, the weak ones were always supported by a bunch that worked. Wrongfully Accused, on the other hand, is just an endless parade of unfunny, dated jokes and pathetic slapstick. It's still marginally better than Proft and Nielsen's last collaboration, the suicide-inducing Mr. Magoo, if only because there are jokes in this film, if extremely bad ones, rather than just endless scenes of Nielsen bumping into things. If that's what you want out of a comedy, never fear: There are plenty of head-bonks in this film, too.