Naked Netflix Movie Review

Naked (2017)

Watch Naked on Netflix
Written by:  Rick Alvarez, Cory Koller, Marlon Wayans, Mårten Knutsson & Torkel Knutsson (based on an original story by)
Directed by: Michael Tiddes
Starring: Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Neil Brown Jr., Dennis Haysbert
Rated: TV-MA

Plot
Marlon Wayans plays man-child Rob who wakes up naked in an elevator an hour before his wedding. He scrambles to reach his destination only to discover that he's reliving that same hour over and over again.

Verdict
It's incredibly derivative. Naked  has no ambition, content to recycle tired jokes and pull out random sub-plots as needed to prop up the story. It's Groundhog Day (1993) stripped of nuance, feeling, and intelligent writing. It's bad on it's own right, but being a lazy rip off makes it all the worse. There are many, many time loop properties done so much better.
Skip it.

Review
This focuses on standard under achiever Rob (Marlon Wayans) who happens to be an excellent substitute teacher because he's just so affable. He's lazy and funny, which should be an affront to all teachers. You can't be lazy and good. Rob doesn't want to commit to having a full time job, or kids, but he is committed to marrying his rich fiance.

This is a television episode stretched to feature length. It offers nothing new and doesn't explain what happened. We're left to assume Rob looped so that he could fix his life, that and otherwise Wayans would have nothing to do for ninety minutes.
The obvious comparison is Groundhog Day. We don't know why that movie had the loop, but it provided us opportunities to guess. Even Bill Murray's character Phil, wondered if it was the groundhog. That hinted at how long the loop had been, and it had to have been a long time. Phil started a new loop when he died or went to sleep.

At one point early on a black hole forms and sucks Rob in to start the loop. It's an unnecessary inclusion that just makes the setup more confusing. We get a lot of obvious jokes as Rob wakes up naked in an elevator to start each loop. There's a biker gang, he has to find clothes for the wedding, there's a pink robe, and Brian McKnight shows up too.

Everything comes together in the end in the most perfect way possible which is really annoying. Rob didn't earn anything. In a few minutes Haysbert's character does an about face from hating Rob to liking him. It's manipulation for the climax.

This reminds me a bit of The Leisure Class (read my review). In that movie one character is scamming another. In this, Rob and the movie are scamming the viewer. The Leisure Class had the added benefit of being derived from Project Greenlight (read my review), so I was getting to see what the behind the scenes drama actually created. It may be forced, but it's depth. Naked is waste of time.