Marlon Wayans Urinates Lustily on Harold Ramis' Memory in the Unspeakably Awful 2017 Groundhog Day Knockoff Naked
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Time-loop movies all exist in the endless shadow of Harold Ramis' timeless 1993 masterpiece Groundhog Day the same way that all sound films are compared to the original “talkie” The Jazz Singer.
As a critic, my job is to compare every movie I see to Citizen Kane in terms of quality and The Jazz Singer for impact.
I always ask myself, “Is this movie as good as Citizen Kane and/or as influential as The Jazz Singer?” The answer, oftentimes, is no.
The most recent film that I’ve seen, Rick Alvarez’s 2017 lowbrow comedy Naked, cannot begin to measure up to Citizen Kane. The cinematography, script, and direction are inferior to Orson Welles’ classic, and it doesn’t seem to have had any influence whatsoever, whereas The Jazz Singer was more influential than any film ever made.
Naked doesn’t derive inspiration from Groundhog Day so much as it lurches drunkenly onto Harold Ramis’ grave and urinates lustily for 96 minutes which pass like three or four agonizing days.
When I heard that Marlon Wayans was going to star in a remake of a foreign film called Naked, I got excited about the Little Man cut-up boldly taking on David Thewlis’ acclaimed role as an unhoused misanthrope in a radical new re-imagining of Mike Leigh’s arthouse classic.
Unfortunately, title aside, Naked has nothing to do with Leigh’s film and is, instead, a remake of the 2000 Swedish film Naken, which sounds pretty fucking stupid in its own right.
As someone who reveres Groundhog Day as a perfect movie, I have a particular disdain for this sorry retread. It’s useful only in establishing a bottom for time-loop movies.
The time loop movies to come will never be as good or original as Groundhog Day or as bad as Naked. It represents a true nadir even for Marlon Wayans, a talented actor and comic performer whose movies mostly suck.
Naked scored a rare zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That is as bad as you can do, but it still feels overly generous. Even calling this a movie feels excessively kind.
Wayans’ stinker, which he also co-wrote and produced, casts the Requiem for a Dream star as Rob Anderson, an English teacher at a private school.
The slacker is engaged to Megan (Regina Hall), a doctor who is as out of his league as Hall is too good for this nonsense. Hall is a charismatic performer with an impressive career wasted in a thankless role.
Rob makes a modest living as an educator while his wife is a high achiever like her stern businessman father, Reginald Swope (Dennis Haysbert), who makes no secret of his disapproval of his daughter’s underachieving future husband and preference for her high-flying ex-boyfriend Cody Favors (Scott Foley).
Reginald clearly wants his daughter to end up with Cody, but the younger man is furtively conspiring to take his company from him. Like all corporate intrigue subplots in comedies, this one angrily begs for the cutting room floor. They’re nearly as tedious as diamond smuggling subplots. That’s true of Naked as a whole. It feels less like a movie than 96 minutes of deleted scenes.
The intimidating future father-in-law repeatedly tells Rob that he doesn’t have a real job, that he hasn’t worked a day in his life, and that he's unworthy of his precious daughter because he doesn’t have a career, dreams, or goals. At no point does Rob defend teaching as a profession.
So the drama, such as it is, involves Rob proving to himself, as much, or more, than others, that he’s worthy of becoming betrothed to a woman like Megan despite a widespread, correct perception that he’s marrying way out of his league.
Rob flies to Charleston with his fiance for their wedding only to wake up on the floor of a hotel elevator completely naked, with no idea how he came to be in such a state or who is responsible.
You know a movie has failed as a nudity-based comedy when you have plenty of time and energy to explore the question of why we find public nudity amusing and what it says about us. Goodness knows we’re never distracted by our laughter.
There’s the incongruity of it, I suppose, as well as a sense of shame and embarrassment over violating societal norms and causing proper ladies to faint in the street from shock.
We find public nudity funny because we’re puritans who giggle at sex because it makes us uncomfortable, and we have a hard time looking at it like proper adults.
Naked’s humor is reliant upon a conviction that public nudity is inherently funny and doesn’t need to be strengthened through jokes or craft when you can show a whole lot of bare butt and Marlon Wayans looking undignified.
Rob finds himself reliving the same awful hour on a loop. He begins on the elevator floor in a state of total confusion and obliviousness. He then tries to hide his shame by taking care of his most immediate concern, which is his nakedness and the public and law enforcement’s dim view of public nudity.
Our bland hero encounters R&B superstar Brian McKnight while naked and ends up helping him write a song. Later in the film, we learn that McKnight, seemingly alone, knows that Rob is reliving the same hour in an endless loop, which suggests that there’s a scene where he disclosed that information that somehow was deemed below the film’s standards.
I kind of wish I had watched Naked on DVD so I could see just how bad the deleted scenes are out of morbid curiosity.
Rob has various wacky misadventures within this period of perpetual deja vu. He does a silly dance for a black biker gang in a scene that recalls the “Tequila” scene from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, only joyless and tedious.
Naked seems understandably bored and underwhelmed by itself. Rob’s antics seem random and meaningless. There’s no discipline, internal logic or real attempt at consistency.
Halfway through the film Rob succeeds in scoring snazzy clothes to hide shameful nakedness. This is accomplished by defeating his nemesis in a public fistfight, then stealing his clothes.
The fight scenes recall Edge of Tomorrow and Boss Level enough to suffer terribly by comparison. The filmmakers are throwing everything at the wall, but none of it sticks.
Rob is freshly dressed and exchanging vows with his beautiful bride way too early when he makes a blithering mess of himself with his poorly chosen words. That leads him to use some of his time loop time to get better at publicly speaking.
In its third act, Naked follows Groundhog Day and takes a turn towards the dramatic as Rob wrestles with his insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, but the film rings hollow because it lacks substance or a dramatic core.
Netflix released Naked. That means that people did not have to buy tickets to see it or pay for babysitters, parking, or popcorn. People didn’t even have to wear pants to see Naked. They could watch it sans clothes if so inclined.
That seems appropriate. Nobody should have to pay money to see Naked. No one should see it, period. It is a worthless motion picture without a single redeeming facet.
Wayans is a likable performer, but Naked is not likable or watchable. Like his siblings, Wayans makes a lot of stinkers and recently announced a return to the Scary Movie franchise after an extended absence.
I hated the original Scary Movie, so I’m not at all excited about the prospect of a new one. However, if I might set the bar very low, it might be bad, but it can’t be as bad as Naked.
Or maybe it could! The world is truly a terrible place. It’s lousy with Wayans making lousy movies.
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