Director: James Keach
Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Lochlyn Munro, Vanessa Angel

It's often interesting to look at the careers of many famous actors, to see how they worked up from being unknown actors to becoming big stars. But it's also very interesting to look at when famous stars have their fame and bankability crumble, whether it be instantaneously from something like a scandal, or with the general public just becoming tired of the actors and the movies they appear in. There are many examples of this, some of whom I have talked about in previous movie reviews, but the actor today that I really want to talk about that fits in this category is Leslie Nielsen. It's very likely that you have some knowledge of him already, and know that his great fame came to him much later in life than with many other actors. For a long time he was best known pretty much for serious roles, from his role as the commander in the famous and classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, to the mayor in the Canadian disaster movie (in more ways than one) City On Fire. Though Nielsen played these serious roles with professionalism, he yeared for a real breakthrough role that would show him to audiences in a different way. He got that chance when he was cast in a supporting role in the classic comedy Airplane! The movie was a big hit, and did lead to him being cast in a short-lived comedy television series (Police Squad). Though the television series was cancelled, Nielsen's ability to handle comedy were remembered by the producers, who a few years later cast him in the lead role of the 1988 comedy film The Naked Gun. Well, as you probably know, the movie was a big hit, and Nielsen finally became a big A-list star. Hollywood and audiences were ready to see Nielsen in a different light and cast him in more high-profile Hollywood comedy films.

However, a quick look at Nielsen's filmography from that point on almost took an instant nosedive. His first film after The Naked Gun was the dismal Exorcist spoof Reposessed. Then after a well received sequel to The Naked Gun, Nielsen took roles in such movies as All I Want For Christmas, Surf Ninjas, and Dracula: Dead And Loving It. Things just got worse from there, with the only (temporary) relief to his sagging career being another entry in The Naked Gun series. It was also around this time that Nielsen co-wrote a so-called autobiography (The Naked Truth) that was so painfully unfunny that I'm glad that my mother decided to buy it for me only when it was in the bargain bin of a local book store. (Ironically, I'm sure it would have been funnier had Neilsen written it with a sober and truthful tone.) Reading the unfunny book (and seeing all those unfunny comedies), I quickly saw what one of my Internet friends (and sometimes guest critic) said later about Nielsen - that with his fame, he had made this mistake of thinking he was a comedian. If you look at Airplane! or The Naked Gun films, you will see that Nielsen is funny when he is acting seriously. When he's acting "funny", he is simply not funny. Nielsen didn't get this, and his bad choice of movies and acting style continued to get worse, along with the movies' eventual box office gross. Eventually Hollywood pretty much abandoned asking Nielsen to be the lead star in major Hollywood studio movies, and in desperation to restart his career, Nielsen helped to produce as well as be the lead star in the 2000 Canadian-German science fiction comedy 2001: A Space Travesty. Despite a hefty budget, the end results were so bad that no Hollywood distributor was willing to release the movie into American theaters. Indeed, even the Canadian distributor was only willing to give the movie a feeble theatrical release (the number of theaters being just a third of what would at the minimum be considered "wide" in the Great White North) and a near-invisible marketing campaign in Canada, and it instantly died once it started screening in (empty) theaters.

From that point on, Nielsen's acting career was pretty much minor league stuff. He did some television, but when it came to feature films, pretty much all of what he was offered were roles that were basically extended cameos, movies such as An American Carol and Superhero Movie. The general bad quality of those movies he made brief appearance in certainly didn't do anything to life him out of the acting doldrums he was in up to his death in 2010. One of the few exceptions in this period where he was given more to do in a movie was with the movie Camouflage, releaded right after his 2001: A Space Travesty embarrassment. Upon finding a DVD copy of it in a thrift store, I was interested to see if Nielsen would seize on the opportunity to do something different and good... or continue with his wearingly familiar and increasingly unpopular schtick. In the movie, Nielsen plays a Los Angeles private investigator by the name of Jack Potter, one who has seen a lot of better days. One day, Potter is contacted by a man named Marty Mackenzie (Lochlyn Munro, Riverdale). Mackenzie is a failed actor, but one who recently staged a flop stage play where he played a private detective, and his experience with the play got him interested in the private detective profession - and he hopes that Potter will take him under his wing and help him to become a real detective. Potter wants nothing to do with Mackenzie, but Mackenzie is so insistent that Potter reluctantly takes him in. Potter decides to send Mackenzie on a case far away in a small town in Oregon, where a male client has asked that someone keep an eye on his wife, who may be cheating on him. Mackenzie, thrilled to be on a case, takes off to the small town... but neither he nor Potter know of the trouble that's ahead of them.

Besides the presence of Nielsen, Camouflage also boasts another famous actor in its credits, though not in an acting role. One of the three screenwriters happened to be Billy Bob Thornton (Monster's Ball). However, Thornton is credited with a pseudonym ("Reginald Perry") instead of his real name. With that in mind, as well as the copyright listed in the end credits indicating the movie spent a somewhat extended time on the shelf before its 2001 release, likely you're thinking the movie is a stinker. Well, not entirely. Most of the merit to be found comes from what director James Keach (Stacey's brother, who earlier contributed voice acting to The Noah) manages to put into the movie. He manages to present the scenes taking place indoors on studio sets to look pretty convincing, adding the right touch of wear and tear. Outdoors in various Vancouver and surrounding area locations, he soaks up the natural atmosphere to great effect, particularly in the climactic scene taking place at a real abandoned mine. You really do feel like you are in the middle of nowhere in a small northwestern American town. There is also some fairly impressive camerawork with cranes and other tools. However, due to an obviously low budget, seams quickly start to show. After the opening credits of the movie, using computer animation that would embarrass the makers of the 1990s Canadian computer animated children's television show Reboot, the first few sequences in Los Angeles use extensive stock footage that simply does not come close to matching the newly shot Vancouver footage. Also, there are times when the actors' dialogue is either poorly recorded or mispronounced by the actors, and Keach either did not notice this or was unable for one reason or another to reshoot the sequences or have it looped during the post-production stage.

However, these problems are pretty small compared to the inability of Keach to make Camouflage have an interesting story, let alone humor that is actually funny. But even Mel Brooks would have problems generating any heat from the weak script. Storywise, the movie starts off okay, setting up the situation well and then extending into the introduction to the mystery the character of Mackenzie has to face. But in short notice, things become very uninteresting. It's certainly a slow-moving mystery, but what really sinks it is that the movie doesn't take time to properly flesh out the vast majority of the various characters, whether they be Mackenzie or the various eccentric residents of the small town. Because I learned so little about them, I didn't really care what they were doing or how they would end up. It was like being stuck for over an hour in a room full of unfamiliar strangers talking about subjects I had no interest in. It doesn't help that along the way the characters execute actions that make no sense. When Mackenzie and Potter are fleeing in their car from gun-wielding rednecks and accidentally drive onto a naval base, do they promptly stop their car and surrender? No - for some reason they jump out of their car so the car can go over a cliff (well, I admit it did look spectacular.) Later, when Mackenzie is tied up and placed on a conveyer belt, it never occurs to him to simply roll off the conveyer belt before he can be crushed. I would also like to mention that the narration Leslie Nielsen provides throughout the movie seems like a post-production patch up job for the weak story, such as when Neilsen's character admits a big secret to his protege, and it promptly shoved aside and never brought up again. The narration also seems to be a device to try and add more humor, but the movie is almost completely unfunny. The lone comic scene in the movie that I found amusing was when at an isolated redneck community, one of the rednecks turns out to be a wannabe lounge singer. It did give me a couple of chuckles, I admit.

Apart from that scene, the humor is Camouflage is dead upon arrival. So much of the humor is based on comic ideas that would have been old hat for an audience in the golden age of cinema. When a character is punched in the nose and has it broken, someone then says it won't hurt when he sets it straight, and... And when Mackenzie gets to the small town to register with the local police, the sheriff says his identity won't be spread to the residents, but in the next scene at the local diner... In other words, the humor is almost entirely tired and predictable. There seems to have been a realization by the screenwriters of this, because they often severely jar the general old-fashioned tone by throwing in modern R-rated comic material, ranging from showing off a number of sex toys in a briefcase to multiple utterances of the four-lettered "s" and "f" words. Even the lovable Nielsen gets to spout off foul language and crude references, which is indeed a strange sight to behold. It's also strange because only a little over a couple of years after appearing peppy in Wrongfully Accused, Nielsen looks like he's aged over ten years, with wrinkly skin and an unshaven face. He comes off as extremely grumpy, maybe from realizing his career at this point had suddenly taken a severe nosedive. I get he's supposed to be playing a hard-boiled private eye, but he doesn't seem to know he's in a comedy and should lighten up just to the right light deadpan degree whenever possible. It should come as no surprise that he also puts in no conviction when his detective character should be on the ball. Real private eyes would probably have a lot of things to say about his character or the rest of the Camouflage, most of it not very good. Though I am just a movie critic and not a private detective, I would like to someday investigate how the behind-the-scenes production of this movie went almost completely wrong, as well as find out the reason why the back of the movie's DVD box claimed that the fullscreen presentation was a "special feature".

(Posted January 14, 2024)