Review: American Virgin (2009)

Teen comedy starring Rob Schneider and Jenna Dewan. After involuntarily over indulging and becoming drunk for the first time in her life, a freshman college girl discovers her sinful shenanigans have been caught on camera by a shoddy video producer. With her scholarship for college coming from an abstinence group who believe in no sex before marriage, it is a race against time and across country as she and her friends attempt to retrieve the potentially damaging footage before it is exposed. 

I've always wanted to see a film that contained this much adult content and yet felt so geared towards being a family movie.

 I really don't know who this movie was made for. The story is so fluffy it seems like young girls were the target demographic, but then there's the raunchy college humor and frequent nudity. We see boobs … lots of boobs.

  A girl, Priscilla (Jenna Dewan), who has devoted her life to chastity and following rules, goes to college on scholarship from an organization that promotes celibacy.

  Priscilla inadvertently gets drunk and is filmed topless at a party by "Chicks Go Crazy" (the movie's fictional version of "Girls Gone Wild"). Priscilla and her new-found college friends embark on a journey to save her reputation and her scholarship by getting the footage back. Along the way she learns lots of lessons about life and love.

Although it has lots of (attempted) college humor, the storyline is that of a typical formulaic teen movie, complete with morals and cliché moments. Sometimes it's rather painful. One scene in particular stands out in my mind, where the main character and a guy who's falling in love with her are listening to the radio and actually break out into song.

Watch if you want.

I'll be generous and give this one 2.5/5

Review: Live Animals

An alright low-budget horror movie.

    After introducing us to Wayne, we meet brother and sister, Nick and Erin. Erin is clearly depressed over a recent breakup, and caring sibling Nick encourages her to get over it by "getting under someone."

A raunchy party ensues, but as the teens drink and screw, dark forces spy on them through a photo lens. And when the party winds down, the teens find themselves hunted by a dart gun wielding, diabolical trapper named Edgar.

    After a well-paced chase and eventual capture, the surviving teens find themselves chained to stalls in a large horse-barn. Having already been made aware of the brawn, we quickly learn that the brains behind the operation is the grandfatherly Wayne, who establishes his dominance over his prisoners in a gruesome scene. Let's just say that gore fans will be pleased, and tongues everywhere will be quiver in fear.

    The story tightens as more and more details come out: Wayne is a player in a human slavery operation. And in one excellently paced and creepy scene, he sells one of the teens to a scary merchant named Amell. Amell inspects the captives like one would a horse or a prized steer, and the coldness of this scene will resonate more with audiences than any of the bloody events that follow.

        Adding an eerie prop, that of a walking stick, Amell makes the merchant an insidious classic bad guy, and like Wayne, this merchant has brought with him muscle equipped with appropriate bondage gear. Methodically, Edgar and Amell's henchman go about their duties, This scene has a chilling feel as nail after nail closes the box around the trembling child.

        "Live Animals" looks uniform and rich. Although much of the film takes place in low light, the details are clear and sharp. Folks familiar with limitations of digital video will find the image pleasing and film-like.

I’ll give this one

 3 out of 5 Stars