Film Review: Wrongfully Accused (1998)

Five years after The Fugitive, one of the more successful action films of its time, came the inevitable sequel U.S. Marshals. It also coincided with arrival of inevitable parody, 1998 film Wrongfully Accused, written and directed by Pat Proft. Protagonist, played by Leslie Nielsen, is Ryan Harrison famous violinist who is well-liked by women and one of them, beautiful and seductive Lauren Goodhue (played by Kelly LeBrock), apparently wants to take him to bed. Harrison refuses because Lauren happens to be married to politician Hibbing Goodhue (played by Michael York). After Hibbing is murdered, Harrison is the only suspect because he had misfortune to be found at the scene of the crime. Harrison claims that the true killer is one-armed, one-eyed and one-legged man, but nobody believes him. He is tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. During the transport he uses opportunity to escape. While trying to evade the manhunt organised by Lieutenant Fergus Falls (played by Richard Crenna), Harrison also tries to prove his innocence and unmask the conspiracy behind the murder. He receives help from Cass Lake (played by Melinda McGraw), an artist who has fallen in love with him.

Wrongfully Accused was the only directorial effort in the career of Pat Proft, writer and producer best known as one of the writers for Police Academy and his work on popular parody film series Naked Gun. This film tries to employ the content formula that had worked in Naked Gun, but also in countless other parodies in 1990s and 2000s Hollywood – very weak plot that serves as an excuse for rapid series of gags with very varied quality of humour and very broad objects of parodies. Most of those targets are popular films that were released in previous few years, like Titanic, as well as some 1990s pop culture phenomena like Riverdance. Like with so many of such parodies, Wronfully Accused shows very little creativity and in this particular case quality of humour is below satisfactory. For each funny joke comes at least two or three that don’t work. The only thing that keeps film together and prevents it to be a complete waste of time is confident work of Leslie Nielsen, who could play lead roles in such films in his sleep. His efforts are helped by Melinda McGraw, one of the more underrated actresses of her generation who shows genuine comic talent. However, everyone expecting entertainment on Naked Gun or Police Academy level is going to be disappointed. The viewers agreed with such verdict and turned Wrongfully Accused into massive flop, with Proft not directing any film ever again.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo

Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7