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Basically Unwatchable

Only-A-Child | 05/30/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I won't claim that this is the worst movie ever although many would award it at least a honorable mention. It's out on DVD by some outfit called "The Asylum" which appears to actually have a worse library than "Troma Productions". I watched this because "Jenya Lano" is one of the stars; she is the only one associated with this thing who has actually been able to find real work in the industry since its release. She may wish now that she had used an assumed name, worn a mask, and disguised her two enormous talents.

Imagine film students Leah and Vincenzo from the cable show "Film School" (The Tisch School of the Acts at NYU) collaborating on a feature length pseudo-documentary as their class project. They take a few girls with modeling experience from an acting for the camera class, get $10,000 from Parker and Jennifer to buy film (Parker's Visa card again), and enlist a bunch of unpaid volunteers for a one weekend to shoot at a car dealership and a skid row motel.

Unfortunately they don't buy film until late on Friday. Parker buys color film and Jennifer buys black and white film. They don't discover this until Saturday morning and by then the film supply store is closed. They decide to improvise and shoot with both film stocks. Since the apparent objective of the screenplay is to show the "real world" of modeling and since Leah had just watched "The Wizard of Oz", they come up with an interesting solution. They decide to use the color film for the modeling assignments (think Oz), and the black and white for the behind the scenes stuff (think Kansas). Unfortunately the color film stock is expired high-speed stuff that looks grainy and needs lots of color correction. So the transformation possibilities don't really work but that is the least of their troubles.

The real problem is that the premise, "blowing the lid off the L.A. modeling scene", is of interest only to insiders who already know everything the film is about to reveal. Which is pretty much the same with any vocation, do you really want to see a movie that "blows the lid off the Youngstown actuarial scene"? Couple that with a screenplay that makes "Coyote Ugly" seem like "Citizen Kane" and this thing is dead in the water before it can even leave the pre-production stage.

Which is probably just as well because Holly Gagnier volunteered to be the casting director. Now while Holly is the biggest name associated with this project, she once starred in an exercise video and she did a great job as the "Veruca Salt" spoiled rich girl character in "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", she does not seem to have much casting director experience on her resume. Holly's cast seems game (I even spotted her briefly in one scene) but they don't really have a coherent story to tell.

The best that can be said about the movie is that you get a "feel good feeling" every time you contemplate the poor folks who had to deal with this stuff in post-production. You feel good that you were not responsible.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

"

It was ok

Alan Carroll | Ithaca, NY United States | 02/12/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I thought it started out good and had some very enteraining parts. I thought the use of Black and White and Color was well done to differenciate different parts of the movie. But as a whole it was lacking is some intangable way that prevented it from being a great movie."