Showing posts with label Rod Fontana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rod Fontana. Show all posts

Monday, October 12, 2015

The Graduate XXX

The Graduate XXX
2011 (exact date unknown)
Cinnamon Productions
Porn, Historical, Comedy, Romance
Download
C-

Needless to say, when I reviewed the book (http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/07/graduate.html), I did not imagine  that three years later I would be giving a porn parody of it the exact same grade.  The flaws are very different, but let me first talk about what I like.  The movie is easily the funniest of the three Anthony Rosano parodies I own, much of the humor coming out of juxtaposition, whether the '60s look with a more modern sensibility, or the way that lines from the original movie appear in a hypersexual context.  (Mrs. Robinson still denies she's seducing Ben even as she gives him a blowjob!)  There's a cheesy montage of Ben and Elaine falling in love, paired with heavy-handedly suggestive visuals and no dialogue, and then later they claim to have exchanged important personal information during "the montage."  Also, the music is great, not just the instrumentals but the Simon & Garfunkel satires.  ("A Hazy Shade of Winter" somehow becomes scolding of Ben for not washing his fingers.)

The three leads are well cast, not just Rosano as nervous Benjamin Bradcock (ha ha) and India Summer as posh Mrs. Robinson (although the movie gets very lampshady when she says she's "twice his age"), but also Raven Alexis as a generally serious Elaine.  Both fathers/husbands (James Bartholet and Herschel Savage), although their hair is grayed up in a distractingly fake way, do well with their roles.  Ron Jeremy, as Mr. Braverman/ Bus Driver, has a funny bit about "plastic novelties."  Rod Fontana (Skinner of Sex Files) has a good scene as the Night Clerk playing deadpanly off of Rosano, but I could've completely done without the return of Evan Stone, here playing a creepy Bouncer.

Which brings me to what I don't like about the movie, which is, as with other porn parodies, unfortunately most of the sex.  (I thought at one point I might wind up a porn addict, but I was apparently buying porn for the wrong reasons.)  The sex here is mostly BDSM, which is definitely not my cup of tea, although at least it's not overly violent here.  I suppose it could be said that it's used to reveal Mrs. Robinson's character, that she's a bitch who secretly wants to be dominated, but then why do we also get Stone bullying the poor stripper?  As for the more vanilla scenes, the threesome earlier on isn't bad, but we don't find out until after the fact that the man is Elaine's cheating boyfriend.  (Lexi Belle, who was Sam's friend in the Who's the Boss parody, is one of the two baby-voiced coeds.)  The Ben and Elaine scene is the only sex I actually liked, especially since it pays off in a surreal moment when her boyfriend shows up and she claims Ben is just an old friend of the family, when it is extremely obvious they've just had sex.

In fact, quite a bit of the movie is surreal, to the point that I was half seriously considering using a "fantasy" tag.  Characters can suddenly arrive at lightning speed, like they've been Scott-Pilgrimized.  And for no reason at all, both sets of parents show up on the bus when Ben & Elaine run away.  They're not angry, they're actually quite cheerful, like this is all some Candid Camera stunt.  It makes plot holes like Mrs. Robinson's consequence-less seduction of Ben's mother after he falls for Elaine perhaps not matter.  Maybe this whole thing is just meant to be a drug trip, since there are scenes of drug use at the frat house (Delta Kappa Smegma, hee hee) of the boyfriend (Parker Cameron Stevenson, ho ho).  Or maybe the source material (both book and movie) never made much sense to begin with.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody

The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody
Sept. 30, 2009
Digital Sin
Porn, Romance, Horror
Download
D+

My porn collection has doubled to six movies since I reviewed Different Strokes.  This is entirely due to the acting talents of Anthony Rosano, who here plays Mulder.  After watching him in Who's the Boss?: A XXX Parody, I wondered what else he'd done.  I watched some trailers and (non-pornographic) clips, and this and the Graduate parody seemed the best of the lot.  In fact, I quite enjoyed the porn-less version of this movie on YouTube, even though I've seen maybe one episode of The X-Files.  He and Kimberly Kane, who's apparently a dead ringer for Dana Delany, are both quite good (she won an adult film acting award, and he was nominated, for this movie) and also have an appealing chemistry.  The mood of the film is appropriately atmospheric, although it seems that it's more horror-focused than the more sci-fi-oriented source material.

So why the low grade?  Well, unfortunately I didn't care for any of the sex scenes besides Rosano's and Delany's, which manages to be both hot and romantic, coming as it does after a believable confession of love.  With all the other pairings, and group sex, I hadn't the slightest interest in seeing those people together, and I found the sex boring and seemingly endless.  If the movie were just what's on YouTube, plus that love scene, I'd probably go with a B+, but the running time would be more than an hour less than it actually is.

The "parody" in the title by the way is misleading.  Unlike most of the other movies in the parody-porn subgenre (more about that under WtBXXXP), this is not played for laughs, although there are moments of humor, mostly in Mulder and Scully's quips.  I think the "dark" was put in there to suggest this but it makes it sound like it'll be black comedy porn, which it isn't either.

Evan Stone, who's the male Club Goer, would be a Bouncer in The Graduate XXX, while Rod Fontana, who's Skinner, would be the Night Clerk there.