As a porno film, this is pretty unique. The sex is routine, about cheating husbands and wives, but there are several interesting characterizations. Ashlyn Gere, as usual,is excellent, this time trying comedy, and she scores well as a boozing, trashy, unfaithful wife, and Colt Steele almost steals the acting honors from Ashlyn, superbly underplaying his role as a handsome, but coldhearted stud. There's a shock ending, something that you rarely see in porn. Worth checking out.
2 Reviews
Overly ambitious PT dramedy
lor_29 April 2024
"Cheating" falls squarely into Paul Thomas's specialty, a life-style romantic drama, in the form of a comedy. Ashlyn Gere's birthday party is the occasion for an endless string of increasingly far-fetched "unfaithful" sex acts among her friends, culminating in a surprise, rather cutesy, ending.
Problem here is quite obvious, though prolific pornographer Paul didn't care - he was directing over a dozen features a year for Vivid, so many that he used different names (including Judy Blue) and even a Vivid sub-label (Wave) to hide the fact of his overdoing it.
Unlike current porn structure, the 90-minute movie has a large number of brief sex scenes instead of dwelling on just 4 or 5 endless ones. And the complex editing tosses in brief flashbacks at will, sometimes in quite confusing fashion. For example, the first sex scene has Gere arguing with hubby Steven St. Croix, and we're treated to her having a hot and heavy sex flashback with Colt Steele ("the other man") climaxing with him about to deliver a cum shot in her mouth, but it turns out to be Steven ejaculating! This sleight of hand via the editing room is creative and flashy, but more in the nature of audience manipulation than effective storytelling.
Worse yet, with the running gag of Nick East repeatedly betraying his wife Alex Jordan during the very party she is hosting, the danger of getting caught humping his mistress Leena becomes so great that all credibility is lost.
I suspect PT was actually making fun of the arbitrary injection of sex at every turn in a porn movie, at the expense of hurting his own more serious movie. Some proof of that is later in the film where Gere is cheating with Jonathan Morgan, wife of Euro beauty Christna Angel, outdoors, and the camera pans from him giving her a facial to Leena & Nick East humping in a car about 5 feet away from them, unnoticed. That impossibility leads to Nick & Leena getting out of the car to continue having sex on the car hood, one of porn's most corny gimmicks, right up there with having sex atop a pool table.
So the enjoyably farcical nature of this sex, sex and more sex comical format continues in showy fashion right until the finale, when Gere suddenly turns very, very serious to confront everyone, almost like a scene from a mainstream movie like "The Big Chill", with an accusatory "What happened to us?" speech. Not to worry, the one missing member of this clique of adulterous friends finally shows up to present Gere with her present and make the surprise announcement that returns us to levity. Watch and see.
Problem here is quite obvious, though prolific pornographer Paul didn't care - he was directing over a dozen features a year for Vivid, so many that he used different names (including Judy Blue) and even a Vivid sub-label (Wave) to hide the fact of his overdoing it.
Unlike current porn structure, the 90-minute movie has a large number of brief sex scenes instead of dwelling on just 4 or 5 endless ones. And the complex editing tosses in brief flashbacks at will, sometimes in quite confusing fashion. For example, the first sex scene has Gere arguing with hubby Steven St. Croix, and we're treated to her having a hot and heavy sex flashback with Colt Steele ("the other man") climaxing with him about to deliver a cum shot in her mouth, but it turns out to be Steven ejaculating! This sleight of hand via the editing room is creative and flashy, but more in the nature of audience manipulation than effective storytelling.
Worse yet, with the running gag of Nick East repeatedly betraying his wife Alex Jordan during the very party she is hosting, the danger of getting caught humping his mistress Leena becomes so great that all credibility is lost.
I suspect PT was actually making fun of the arbitrary injection of sex at every turn in a porn movie, at the expense of hurting his own more serious movie. Some proof of that is later in the film where Gere is cheating with Jonathan Morgan, wife of Euro beauty Christna Angel, outdoors, and the camera pans from him giving her a facial to Leena & Nick East humping in a car about 5 feet away from them, unnoticed. That impossibility leads to Nick & Leena getting out of the car to continue having sex on the car hood, one of porn's most corny gimmicks, right up there with having sex atop a pool table.
So the enjoyably farcical nature of this sex, sex and more sex comical format continues in showy fashion right until the finale, when Gere suddenly turns very, very serious to confront everyone, almost like a scene from a mainstream movie like "The Big Chill", with an accusatory "What happened to us?" speech. Not to worry, the one missing member of this clique of adulterous friends finally shows up to present Gere with her present and make the surprise announcement that returns us to levity. Watch and see.
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