Two under-the-radar, new-release DVDs engage in head-to-head combat. You don’t have the time or money to go to the theater. Here’s some help sorting through that daunting wall at the front of your friendly, local video store.
The Amateurs
Raygun Productions
Starring Jeff Bridges, Tim Blake Nelson, Glenne Headly
Andy Sargentee, a struggling divorcee and parent, comes to the conclusion that the only way to finally do something with his life is to get his entire small town to produce hardcore pornography.
The lone voice of dissent takes the tone of, “I’m no choir boy, but if we’ve made a porno, we’ve made a porno.”
Andy is played by Jeff Bridges, and his dear townie friends include Ted Danson (Cheers), Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), and William Fichtner (everything else). There is no good explanation for the steady stream of familiar faces – this is the kind of film you usually see at the start of a major actor’s career.
Andy’s thought process is simple: he needs to become relevant and successful.
Sex is always relevant and lucrative. A quick glance at the escort ads in the newspaper, the sight of a busy strip club across the street – it all makes way too much sense.
And they’re not talking about trash here. The local town-folk study hours of tape and concoct ambitious plotlines, including sex on a helicopter rope ladder in the midst of an explosion.
The middle of the film is where it gets tantalizing, because it finally gives the actors a tiny little air-bubble of breathing room.
Unforunately, it doesn’t let itself be just about men reacting to the pornography business (though those are its funniest moments).
The Amateurs is actually about a town coming together in the most unlikely (and implausible) of situations, with the overarching theme that pleasant surprises almost always result from taking chances you would initially disregard as too foolish, ambitious or ridiculous.
This goes for everything from the production of a porno movie to asking the hot saleslady at a furniture store if she’ll have “hot lesbian” sex on film.
VS.
After Sex
Nala Films
Starring Mila Kunis, Mark Blucus, Zoe Saldana
After Sex is a high-concept movie about high-concept relationships. It’s a series of short vignettes unified by a common theme – the way in which people are temporarily uninhibited after they’ve just gotten their rocks off.
Freed from their libidos, they can finally confront one another with all those honest revelations that probably would have prevented them from shacking up in the first place.
After Sex puts up a “diverse” assortment of couples – closeted college lesbians, elderly swingers, detached adulterers – with the arrogant notion that the filmmaker just needs some sincerity and a gimmick to give them dignity.
Contrary to what the film wants to do, it ends up wheeling them out like a parade of freaks, ready to knock down your prejudices with edgy dialogue.
The only time we’re not offered the hint of an elaborate back-story is when we’re dealing with a couple of white, attractive, heterosexual thirty-somethings at the very beginning.
They don’t need any explanation, and all they’re worried about is coming to grips with their feelings.
After that “normal” couple is out of the way, we can dive into the gay frat boy with puppy-dog eyes being coaxed out of the closet by an overbearing sex demon.
I’m not sure if I was insulted for the white thirty-somethings, or for everybody else.
But that’s just the annoying part of the movie – the rest is simply half-naked people talking dirty and angrily to one another while trying to catch their breath. It looks pretty slick.
If you hadn’t read this review, you’d get the surprise of cameos from Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman and Mr. Jones from the Friday movies.
By the end, you’re left only with a renewed appreciation for the art of storytelling.
Letting us know that characters have had stories, at one point in their lives, isn’t quite enough.
The Winner.
On a technicality, After Sex. Mostly because most of its actors haven’t starred in much better movies, and it’s watchable.
I would almost genuinely recommend it for those days when you’re seriously ill and propped in front of a TV, popping in and out of consciousness. Especially if you’ve always had a crush on Jackie from That 70’s Show, or spry old Mr. Jones.