Just a couple of hedonists.
(2011) Sex Comedy (Freestyle) Martin Freeman, Mandy Moore, Jonathan Silverman, Melissa George, Angus Deayton, Daisy Beaumont, Paul Chowdhry, Jerry Stiller, Beverly Klein, Edward Akrout, Andi Osho, Tim Beckmann, Louie Spence, Kenneth Collard, Carolyn Tomkinson, Michael Burgess, Lorraine Hilton, Ian Midlane, Tracy Wiles. Directed by Jonathan Newman
Marriage is not the easiest undertaking. So many different elements go into making it work – financial stability (or at least a reasonable facsimile of same), sexual compatibility, child raising philosophy, shared interests – it’s a wonder that any of them actually work.
Alvin Finkel (Freeman) and his wife Ellie (Moore) have lost that spark. Months go by without any sex at all and when they do have it, there’s a kind of drudgery to it, as if it is some kind of chore. Both of them are wondering if that signals a basic incompatibility or worse yet, that their marriage is crumbling altogether. They decide what they really need is a little bit of spice.
Or perhaps to be more accurate, a whole tractor trailer full of spice. You see, they’re not alone in that predicament – their friends Peter (Silverman) and Janet (George) have been experiencing once the same thing. When some kinky self-pleasuring on the part of Ellie goes terribly, horribly wrong, she decides that the best thing for them would be to involve another couple.
But which couple? It would be too weird to do it with Peter and Janet – like having sex with your siblings. Besides, it’s novelty they seek. Out with the old, in with the new. However, that’s not as easy as it sounds as every couple they interview looking for the right one seems crazier and more unstable than the last. When at last they find a couple that looks like they might work out (Deayton, Beaumont) they make the commitment to take that step – and that’s when the fireworks really begin.
It sounds like the premise for a light and airy sex comedy but that’s not how Newman chose to go. The self-pleasuring incident I referred to earlier was Ellie using a cucumber for self-pleasuring being interrupted unexpectedly by the arrival of her parents who find their baby girl caught red handed as it were – and to make matters worse, the embarrassment causes Ellie to evacuate the cucumber from her vagina with explosive force, sending the veggie missile directly into her daddy’s crotch. Mandy Moore, fire your agent.
The humor here is so heavy-handed and sophomoric that you can only watch the movie slack-jawed, completely flabbergasted that anybody thought these jokes and gags would work. After awhile it becomes kind of a test; surely something funny must occur in this comedy but for my own personal taste in laughs, nothing ever tickled my funny bone. Perhaps you are made of sterner stuff than me.
The movie’s saving grace is Martin Freeman. Before he put on the furry hobbit feet and became one of the most stellar performers of this year’s TV season in Fargo he did this movie and I’ll give him credit it’s as game a performance as you’re likely to see. It’s not enough.
WHY RENT THIS: Martin Freakin’ Freeman.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Dreadfully unfunny. Tries to go either to gross or too refined and ends up being neither.
FAMILY VALUES: A goodly amount of sexual content and a fair amount of foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Newman based this on a short film, Sex with the Finkels that he had done.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: The aforementioned short is included.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Sex Tape
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: The Wicker Tree
Cinema365 