Meet Monica Velour

Meet Monica Velour - Dir. Keith Bearden (2011)

"You screw a few hundred guys and the whole world turns against you."

Marilyn Chambers, Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon, and Nina Hartley. These are some of the biggest starlets in the history of porn. A few of the well-known performers of the golden age of porn have tried to transition into mainstream film, but found the stigma of their previous occupations to be a tremendous hurdle. Other actresses have happily retired and some are still in the business. Others, like Bambi Woods the starlet of the infamous Debbie Does Dallas, seem to have vanished without at race.

Inspired by these tales, Keith Bearden, writing and directing his first feature film, presents Meet Monica Velour, a coming-of-age story about an awkward young man and a faded star.

Tobe (Dustin Ingram) lives with his grandfather (Brian Dennehy) in suburban Wisconsin and earns a living by working a hot dog truck called the Weenie Wiz. He has a fascination with things of a bygone age, preferring to listen to 1930's jazz and watching vintage porn from the early-80's. His favorite skin flicks feature a beautiful blonde named Monica Velour (Jamie Tisdale). Tobe has all her movies on VHS as well as an extensive collection of posters, photos, and clippings. He's just graduated from high school after four completely undistinguished years. Tobe's prospects are slim after being rejected from every college he applied to. Not wanting to sling hot dogs for the rest of his life, he decides to sell the food truck to an artist living in Indiana. By coincidence, Tobe learns that Monica Velour is making a rare appearance at a Podunk strip club called The Petting Zoo.

Faster than you can say "road trip," Tobe makes the long drive to the Hoosier State to meet his dream girl. What he finds instead is a downtrodden and middle-aged divorcee (Kim Cattrall) whose hollow-eyed routine is a sad sight. She lives in a rundown trailer park and is locked in a bitter custody battle for her daughter with her abrasive ex-husband (Sam McMurray). Monica allows Tobe to stay with her out of pity after he's beaten up by a group of frat boys while trying to defend her honor from their cruel taunts. Thus begins an unlikely friendship as Tobe takes it upon himself to save Monica Velour.

Images of Napoleon Dynamite will likely pop into your head due to the striking resemblance between Tobe and Jon Heder's most well-known character. Much like Napoleon Dynamite, Tobe is a lanky, nerdy looking teenager with thick glasses and curly hair. Unlike Napoleon, Tobe isn't a cartoonish caricature. At least there was an eccentric charm in the former character, Tobe is lacking in any distinct personality. He's also not a very likeable protagonist and his naiveté gets downright annoying very quickly. At least, Kim Cattrall gives a brave, if Oscar bait-y, performance as the over-the-hill adult entertainer. Cattrall put on an extra twenty pounds for the part and wore little to no make-up. It's certainly a far cry from her glamorous role as Samantha on Sex and the City. But, Cattrall hardly gets a chance to delve deeper into the character because of how thinly written she is.

Monica Velour isn't totally devoid of positive elements. The opening credits consisting of mock porno posters and video covers are cute. The film also features the great Keith David as Tobe's prospective buyer, an artist of kitschy Americana. His art studio littered with giant Pez dispensers and a statue of Bob's Big Boy. If it sounds like I'm stretching to find compliments, I am.

Meet Monica Velour is a mix of drama and comedy that's lacking in any drama or comedy. Too often Bearden goes for the cheap jokes. The pseudo-porno scenes are tired gags revolving around poor production values and bad acting. Lacking in originality or genuine emotion, this is a film that fakes its way to the money shot.

Rating: * (*****)

The Next Three Days

In Conviction, Hilary Swank plays a mother of two who puts herself through college and law school in order to free her brother after he is wrongly convicted of first degree murder. Russell Crowe, however, is no Hilary Swank. He's Russell Crowe after all and he doesn't have time for any of that fancy book learning. When his wife is sentenced to life in prison, he decides to bust her ass out in The Next Three Days.

Crowe is John Brennan, an English teacher who spends his days lecturing to community college students about Don Quixote. Brennan finds himself in his own Quixotic quest when his wife, Lara (Elizabeth Banks, is arrested during family breakfast time for the murder of her boss. The circumstantial evidence is pretty damning. Lara had an argument with her boss earlier in the day. Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon and blood from the victim was found on her coat. John is thoroughly convinced of Lara's innocence, but their options dwindle as years pass and the appeals process goes nowhere.

John consults with an ex-con (Liam Neeson in a one scene cameo) who literally wrote the book on prison breaks. This formerly unassuming teacher sets in motion an intricate plan to free his wife and escape the country before authorities lock down the city. The ticking clock that gives the film its title kicks when John learns that Lara will be transferred from county jail to a maximum security penitentiary upstate.

The Next Three Days has good moments and weak moments. If you saw Crash, you know that Paul Haggis is not a subtle filmmaker. He's downright blunt and wants to spell everything out for the audience. That trait is evident with the running time of his latest picture. Next Three Days was based on a 2007 French film entitled Pour Elle, which was 96 minutes long. Haggis's version clocks in at over two hours. The movie chugs along at a lethargic pace as we watch the emotional toll that Lara's imprisonment has taken on her husband and young son.

While the dour emotional scenes drag on, the portions that focus on the actual jailbreak are riveting. Yes, they are a bit preposterous and Haggis tends to rely too much on convenient coincidences, but they are riveting. As a law-abiding Joe Average, John must find ways to gather enough cash to live on the run as well as acquire fake IDs. His nocturnal trips to the wrong part of town are tense as is a sequence where John tries out a homemade skeleton key during a visit to his wife. How he learned to make one seems simple enough. He saw it on YouTube. John also learns how to break into a car using only a tennis ball. There's more to the internet than just porn.

Crowe doesn't quite pull off the role of the unassuming school teacher, but he does excel at being gruff and brooding. There's not a lot of chemistry between he and Elizabeth Banks who still looks beautiful while trying to be haggard.

The Next Three Days could have used some judicious editing to tighten the pace and cut the fat. After the mediocrity of the first two acts, the film concludes with a thrilling climax as the prison escape finally happens. That itself might make the movie worthy of a rental.

Rating: ** (*****)

Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill - Dir. Jon Avnet (2008)


Two of the most celebrated actors ever, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, both starred in The Godfather, Part II, but they wouldn’t appear together on-screen until Heat. Even then, they spent most of the film apart as adversaries. In Righteous Kill, DeNiro and Pacino share the majority of screen time together as New York City police detectives Turk and Rooster. The veteran partners investigate a series of vigilante murders targeting criminals who have escaped justice.

You’d think putting DeNiro and Pacino together on screen would easily equal electricity. It doesn’t, at least, not here. Both actors are given bland roles that could have easily gone to any other performer. They essentially sleepwalk through the film with as minimal amount of charisma as will do. Righteous Kill features a talented supporting cast to back them up, all of whom are wasted in one-dimensional roles. Carla Gugino appears as Turk’s girlfriend, a fellow officer into rough sex, a character reeking of tackiness and misogyny. Melissa Leo, so incredible in Frozen River, appears briefly in a throwaway role as a grieving mother.

The script was unoriginal and ridiculously predictable. The film opens with a video taped confession from DeNiro’s character admitting to the murders. These confessions are played throughout the film and hammered into our heads so many times; it becomes blatantly obvious he didn’t do it. The weak plot comes as a shock considering it was written by Russell Gewirtz who penned Inside Man, one of my favorite films from 2006. I suppose being directed by the man behind 88 Minutes canceled that out.

2008 was the year of the crappy cop movie thanks to stinkers like this, Street Kings and Pride and Glory. You’d be better served turning on any random episode of The Shield.

Rating: * 1/2