MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
I often don't review films whose fantastic content consists of "fallacious figments" in the naturalistic mode; that is, where characters do things like talking to the movie's viewers (a thing that happens early in NAKED TRUTH). As of this writing I haven't even reviewed what is probably the classic in that category: 1990's AIRPLANE, which movie TRUTH falls all over itself seeking to (badly) imitate. But as it happens the only true thing about TRUTH is how well it shows how NOT to execute this sort of comedy.
Niko Mastorakis, director and co-writer of this fiasco, is largely known for his 1980s formula-flicks, most of which he also co-wrote and of which I've seen a half-dozen. I remember his oeuvre as adequate formula-productions, and I even gave a mildly positive review to 1989's NINJA ACADEMY. Though that film was little more than a riff on the successful POLICE ACADEMY series, Mastorakis and his co-writer seemed to understand what sort of wacky humor such a riff required. But in TRUTH we see the director and his collaborator utterly failing to get on board with AIRPLANE's type of humor.
One of the first indications of Mastorakis's cluelessness is the naming of his two young male heroes: Frank and Frank. This conceit might have been slightly funny had there been any character differences between the protagonists, like one was daring and the other timid. But no, both are fast-talking slicks aspiring to write for the movies. The only real reason there are two of them is that later they will fall afoul of a murderous drug-dealer and will hide from him the same way Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon did in SOME LIKE IT HOT, by pretending to be women. Mastorakis botches this comedy-model as well, but in fairness he's not really making HOT his primary pattern.
Appropriately, one of the movie's first crummy attempts at an AIRPLANE-style non-sequitur joke takes place on an airplane, while the two Franks are en route to the destination where all the hilarity will ensue. Frank One (not that one can tell them apart) sits in his airline seat asleep, apparently enjoying his dreams. Seventy-year-old stewardess Zsa Zsa Gabor tries to wake Frank, then shakes him and slaps him. When Frank wakes, she tells him she couldn't allow him to have a "dirty dream" about her because she's a "feminist." Now, unlike most of the dumb jokes in TRUTH, the audience is supposed to find this funny because of a real-world event: Gabor being charged in 1989 with having struck a traffic cop -- which resulted in at least one other bit of stunt-casting for Gabor, in the opening scene of the 1989 NAKED GUN sequel. But that bit was over and done in less than a minute. By comparison the TRUTH joke, though milking the same event, lasts too long and fails to deliver a decent punchline.
That said, Gabor at least got a scene focused on her. Most of Mastorakis' previous films starred unknowns and only worked in a few scenes of more prominent actors, which was and is a standard practice in B-movies. But here the director apparently got the idea that the appeal of the Abraham-Zucker movies was that they used a lot of celebrities, particularly in AIRPLANE. So the director worked in blink-and-miss-them cameos by name-actors, where they usually weren't even doing anything funny. Thus one can find in TRUTH the following performers whipping out a few minutes that probably translated to no more than a day's shoot for each: Lou Ferrigno, David Birney, Spice Williams, Alex Cord, Norman Fell, Yvonne deCarlo, Ted Lange, Erik Estrada, Little Richard, Dick Gautier and Bubba Smith. Their appearances are so desultoty they aren't even worth the effort of "star-spotting."
The only half-decent joke in the flick takes place near the end. After the two dudes have escaped various murder-attempts by the drug-dealer (Herb Edelman), they and their FBI contact (Courtney Gibbs) find themselves in a jungle. The drug-dealer corners them, but the good guys are rescued by a gang of LA cops, led by Bubba Smith, who surround the crook and begin beating him with truncheons a la the contemporaneous Rodney King incident. (All of the cops, incidentally, are Black.) The slightly funny part comes at the end, when someone puts up a banner reading, "Police Brutality Tape-- Do Not Cross."
I'd be remiss not to mention that during the Franks' totally tedious female imposture, they get involved with a beauty pageant, and this allows the filmmakers to cast a lot of smokin' babes, including Andrea Parker of THE PRETENDER. But despite a little bit of upper-body nudity, there are dozens of films in which one can find sexcapades superior to those of the (mostly clothed) TRUTH.
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