Good Luck Chuck

(2007)

I never thought that I would one day be springing to the defense of a movie like this, but then again, I never dreamed I'd pick up a 32 point bridge hand, or that I would be be stealing shipments of cumquats to impress my elderly Uncle Stanley's 19-year-old mail order Thai bride either, so there you are. Life sometimes deals the unexpected hand, and it's our responsibility to bid the tricky grand slam or to bring the ben-wa balls and plenty of lubricant to Uncle Stanley's house when he is spending a few days at the Mayo Clinic.

GLC is, to my knowledge, the only major 2007 film to receive NO positive reviews from the cream of the crop at Rotten Tomatoes. Because of the universal critical contempt, I assumed it was a complete crap-fest on the level of Dorm Daze, so I avoided it when it came to the theaters. Of course, the copious nudity made it a must-watch for the Fun House,  and I was surprised to see that the film is not that bad. In essence it is a 70s British sex farce re-tooled into a contemporary American movie. I guess we should not be surprised that films of that nature are widely deprecated by critics and film snobs, since Tuna has covered this subject extensively in his essays on the first two "Confessions..." films.

The role which would have gone to Robin Askwith in the seventies, the silly dentist of only moderate charm who has inexplicable success with the ladies, goes this time to Dane Cook. The explanation for his bewildering gift as a Casanova is that a legend has sprung up around him. No, not what you're thinking. The legend is that any woman who has sex with Chuck will find her perfect dream-man immediately afterward. Women therefore line up at the foot of his bed. Chuck is not happy with the situation. His friend wants to know, "What's wrong with it?"  Well, it turns out that the legend is true (long story, not worth detailing), which means he can never be loved. As soon as he makes love to a woman, she's off to the altar with the next guy, no matter how much Chuck likes her. And Chuck likes Jessica Alba a lot.

His dilemma is, therefore, that if he sleeps with his true love, he assures that she will fall in love with the next guy she meets. But if he can't show any interest in the woman, he's going to lose her anyway. The comedy, such as it is, involves various gimmicky attempts to resolve the dilemma. (Example. He asks his friend, a plastic surgeon, if he can get a completely new face after making love to Alba, so he can also be the next guy after himself.) 

OK, it's not a great movie. Let's not kid ourselves. But a zero percent at Rotten Tomatoes? It's just not that bad. I laughed out loud two or three times, and I made it through the disk without resorting to the fast-forward button. And it has some creative nudity to entertain my simple mind. Hell, those elements alone make it better than at least half of the films I watch each week. If this flick came on cable late in the evening, and you had some chill time coming, I don't think you would be rushing for the remote. Afterwards, you might think, "Well, that was nothing special," but I think you'd probably last it out. It's a helluva lot funnier than the incredibly lame and tedious Mr. Woodcock, which scored 27% from the same "cream of the crop."

The pathetically low critical appraisal probably tells you less about the film than about how far the average critic is from the public's sensibilities. The film scores a C+ at Yahoo (with more than 5000 votes) and grossed nearly $30 million. Obviously some people liked it, and while I didn't really like it, I didn't mind it, either.

• The sex montage: Dane Cook and many different women.
• Jessica Alba. I was floored to see that Alba is actually topless for about two frames, albeit from the side-rear.

 

 

The Portrait of Doriana Grey

(1976)

aka Doriana Grey, aka La Marquise de Sade

I normally leave the Jess Franco movies to Tuna, but I was curious about this one since it is one of Jesse's few efforts at hardcore porn, the old in-out and all.

The premise of the movie is somehow kinda sorta vaguely related to the famous Oscar Wilde story. A mysterious, rich lesbian recluse lives in her isolated castle, while an exact duplicate of her, presumably a twin sister, is confined to a nearby asylum. The countess has numerous affairs, all of which seem to end with her sucking the very life out of her sexual partners like some kind of a sexual vampire who drains her victims with orgasms.

Meanwhile, the other sister spends all of her waking hours saying crazy things and masturbating furiously.

Kinda like Bill Maher.

The two sisters look exactly alike, so there is no direct parallel to the Wilde story, but if you really want to stretch the metaphor, you could say that the Bill Maher sister is paying for the sins of the murderous countess, just as Dorian's portrait paid for his sins. But the most important element of their psychic link has quite a different spin. The institutionalized sister also gets the benefit of Doriana's lust, for the tragic nature of their telepathic communication is that the rich one has all the sex, but the crazy one has all the orgasms.

Maybe not exactly what Oscar Wilde had in mind.

Or maybe exactly what Oscar had in mind, but couldn't express directly in Victorian times.

At any rate, the story begins when a journalist arrives to interview the mysterious countess about her life and her alleged twin, and the story is told using that tete-a-tete as the framing device, thus allowing the countess to narrate constantly. Not that there's much to narrate. Except for the first few minutes of the film, which includes some of the countess's reflections on life and loneliness, the film is basically just non-stop sex scenes.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Franco's approach to sex scenes is somewhat different from what you might see in a modern mass-produced porn film. While the scenes are neither very romantic nor very passionate, they are shot in beautiful lighting with a clinical attention to detail. In fact, "clinical" is probably the best word to describe all of the sex scenes in this film. Lina Romay, Franco's life-partner and collaborator, plays both sisters and between the two roles she manages to engage in a wide variety of recreational activities with both sexes, and to expose herself in gynecological detail, including extreme - almost microscopic - levels of close-up. In her "crazy sister" avatar, Romay also manages to give a BJ onscreen, and director Franco catches the climax just as it happens into her open mouth. Romay does not get penetrated with a man-root, other than in her mouth, but she has a male manservant, and he has a girlfriend, so that allows Franco to introduce some heterosexual penetration into the mix. The ...er .. climax ... of the film is a scene in which Lina has sex with (surprise) Lina. No, I don't mean masturbation, although she does plenty of that, but in this case it's the rich sister paying a visit to the crazy sister.

The film does exhibit some of the problems that plagued Franco's films in that era.

• He makes extensive, most people would say excessive, use of the zoom lens.
• He has occasional focus problems, which he tends to correct on the fly. (I suppose that derives mainly from his use of the zoom, which always seem to require a period of trial-and-error refocusing after he zooms in or out.)
• He re-uses some establishing footage several times. (One clip of Romay walking through the woods in a transparent nightie and five-inch heels appears at least three times.)

My opinion is that the curiosity value of the film (hardcore porn from Romay and Franco) and the superb quality of the transfer outweigh the film's negatives if you are looking for something unique to add to your collection. The icing on the cake consists of plenty of extra features on the DVD. This disc is priced at a premium level (the best price I could find was $29.95 new from xPloited cinema), but I found it a good value. One simply cannot find anything to complain about with this DVD.

• The film has been fully restored and the quality of the transfer is excellent.
• The disk also includes a lengthy compilation of interviews with producer Dietrich and director Franco, all of which have been intercut with samples from this film and others to create a documentary which illustrates the points they are making.
• There is also an interesting special featurette on the restoration process, which is illustrated with before and after examples as well as technical information about the techniques and hardware involved. (This is not specifically about this particular film, but about the creation of "The Official Jess Franco Collection," which basically consists of the Dietrich/Franco collaborations produced in Switzerland in the seventies.)
• There is a documentary about the making of a different Franco film: the Klaus Kinski version of Jack the Ripper, featuring a lengthy analysis from producer Erwin Dietrich.
• There are theatrical trailers from this and fourteen other similar films - forty minutes of film altogether. (Caps from Rolls Royce Baby are seen below. This is the only film I know of wherein Lina shaved her lush bush.)

This film is good niche material, but since that is not my particular niche, I found the special features more fascinating than the film. The trailer gallery is like a time capsule, or perhaps a lesson in an obscure chapter of film history.

Maximum C++++.

Genre fans rarely get anything as sweet as this this: a fully restored film, hardcore done by people who don't usually do it, and a ton of special features. A must-own for fans of Franco and/or Romay.

---

 

There are many caps from this in the Encyclopedia, and I imagine that Tuna will get to it eventually and cover it thoroughly, so I stuck only with Lina and hit only the highlights. Several other women and two men also engage in sexual hijinks.

Also seen below are some caps from the Rolls Royce Baby trailer and Mr. Skin's captures of Lina from various other films which are either not currently represented at all or not represented well enough in the Encyclopedia.

Doriana Grey It isn't practical to make extensive film clips, since that would basically be the entire film. Here are two sample film clips, perhaps Lina's hottest escapades in the film. In the first, a blow job is intercut with furious masturbation. In the second, a clinical genital close up is followed by masturbation, followed by a lesbian scene. The download is 60 meg, but that gives you seven minutes worth of footage.

Rolls Royce Baby

Cartas de Amor

El Fontanero

Lust for Frankenstein

Mansion of the Living Dead

Night of the Skull

Vampire Junction (warning: It's from 2001. She's old and fat)

Going Places

(1974)

More Time Machine travel and more Depardieu.

Miou-Miou stars and shows off lots of full frontal skin. This lovely lass had a daughter with Patrick Dewaere, one of her co-stars in this flick. The daughter was born in 1974 the same year as the release of this movie.

(Scoop's note: Dewaere, who was also a composer, and acted as Depardieu's partner-in-crime in both this film and Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, killed himself in 1982, immediately after wrapping a film in which his character killed himself. He was 35.)

 

Miou-Miou

 

Gerard Depardieu and Dewaere with a topless Brigitte Fossey on a train.
 

Las de La Intuición

And now for something completely different:

Shakira (music video)