Body Shots (1999)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

Michael Cristofer

Writer (WGA):

David McKenna (written by)

Release Date:

21 January 2000 (Spain)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Tonight it's for sex. Tomorrow it's for real. (Unrated VHS Version)

Plot:

A tale of the mysterious, but necessary, mating ritual between men and women of today and everything they think about sex but are afraid to say.

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Attorney | Bar | Shower | Oral Sex

US TV Schedule:

Tue. July 28

8:00 AM

FX

Cast

Joe Basile	...	Bartender
Scott Burkholder	...	Man in Bar
Liz Coke	...	Girl #2
Allison Dunbar	...	Girl #3
Sean Patrick Flanery	...	Rick Hamilton
Edmund Genest	...	Sara's Dad (as Edmond Genest)
Adam Lieberman	...	Burger Joint Cop (as Adam Gordon)
Mark Hicks	...	Bodyguard
Larry Joshua	...	Detective Richards
Elizabeth Liebel	...	Mrs. Drofsky
Ron Livingston	...	Trent
Marc Lynn	...	Disco Bartender
Jerry O'Connell	...	Michael Penorisi
Lou Paget	...	Oral Sex Instructor
Amanda Peet	...	Jane Bannister

Also Known As:

Jello Shots (USA) (working title)
Last Night (USA) (working title)
The Night Before (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexual content including graphic sex-related dialogue, language, violence and scenes of alcohol abuse.

Runtime:

106 min | USA:103 min (R-rated version) | USA:106 min (unrated version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Portugal:M/16 | Canada:16+ (Quebec) | Canada:18 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:18A (British Columbia) (Canadian Home Video rating) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:R (Ontario) (unrated version) | Canada:R (Manitoba) | Netherlands:16 (DVD rating) | Italy:VM18 | Philippines:R-18 | USA:Unrated | Argentina:16 | Australia:R | Chile:18 | France:-16 | Germany:16 | Mexico:C | New Zealand:R18 | Singapore:R(A) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | UK:18 | USA:R (NO. 36662) | South Korea:18 | Malaysia:(Banned) | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

New Line Cinema

Trivia:

The film's title was changed from "Jello Shots" to "Body Shots" because of threatened litigation on the part of Kraft Foods (owner of the "Jell-O" trademark).

Quotes:

Sara Olswang: I see a guy with a cute bum, I just want to bite it.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Take (2008/I)

Soundtrack:

Beautiful

Intense sex, intense feelings, intense Ron Livingstone

Since it's so far apart between seeing good acting, you really get surprised when it just kinda' sneaks up upon you and shows you what difference it makes.

Hollywood has spent years of making movies with bad dialog and acting whilst trying to cover it up with special FX, one-liners and retouched images of whatever actor/actress is the flava of the month. In `Body Shots' you get an incredibly knit-together group of Americas finest, all young actors that has yet to become too big for their own good. That is to say, they can still take on riskier projects that perhaps a bigger actor would be forced to turn down by their management because it would not `go with the audience'.

My personal thanks here to Sean Patrick Flanery and Amanda Peet, whom on earlier occasions showed me that they dared (or did not get any other offers, who knows :) commit to smaller and often much more rewarding ventures.

Tara Reid hasn't really impressed up till now with movies like American Pie and Urban Legends, but here she really gets a chance to act out. Usually, dramatic scenes are edited into smithereens, but all over `Body Shots' you get long, really intense sequences, with all of the cast-members showing their thespian caliber. I was also pleasantly surprised to be taken in by Chris O'Donnell's portrayal of the horny party-jock, since the last time I saw him was in the abysmal movie `Dungeons & Dragons' which kinda' put him on my black-list.

Ron Livingstone is just plain weird, and therefore, marvelous. (That Alka-Seltzer-bit is going to haunt me for a while :)

The editing is first class. In basically all movies, when you see a club-scene, you're not convinced at all. YOU know what it feels like to be in a steamy, crowded club, surrounded by (and being) people in various stages of intoxication. It's seldom portrayed with as much realism as it was here, much thanks to the clever editing. The layout of the story as a whole is also refreshing - not saying that messing up the timeline hasn't been done before - but the cut-scenes between the girls gang and the boys gang, the constant meta-perspective of the actors relaying their personal views of the meat market, and the flashbacks helps to make this movie what it is.

But what struck me most of all was the sex. I can't think about when I last saw a movie with such convincing sex-scenes. It was all the small things YOU do, but they never seem to be able to put into a movie. The sucking of fingers, the difference of intensity in kissing, the touching, the grabbing of genitalia. Now, I'm not saying that showing more always is the best way to portray sex. But when it's called for by the script and the context, then hell yes! And if you're going to attempt to make an honest movie about eight hormonally hyped twenty-something's, then most definitively so.

All in all, I was very impressed. The story has been done before, but not with such pathos. Movies like these make me hopeful of the future. Perhaps we're going away from only producing predictable storylines, uninspiring actors that deliver lines like they have a nail through their kneecap and dialog that you'd never hear outside of the screenwriters head.