Body Shots (1999)

Director: Michael Cristofer

Cast: Joe Basile, Scott Burkholder, Liz Coke

Synopsis: A tale of the mysterious, but necessary, mating ritual between men and women of today and everything they think about sex but are afraid to say.

Any film that shows, in the first five minutes, such sights as a half-drunk man accidentally urinating on a toilet with the lid down, a woman vomiting in the street, and the same woman splitting her lip and cutting her head open when she stumbles on the pavement, will undoubtedly receive the attention it’s makers obviously crave, but for all the wrong reasons. In your face movie-making like this may appeal to the immature and intellectually-stunted, but for everybody else it’s a tiresome and uninspiring experience.

Body Shots does, at least, improve after such an inauspicious start, but not by much. Peopled with loutish, dislikeable characters, most of whom are obsessed with their own sexual gratification at the cost of all else – apart from the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol – it singularly fails to spark the tiniest flicker of interest. Yeah, I know most of us have been there at some point in our lives, but if you’re going to show it in a movie at least wrap such self-absorbed nonentities in a plot that doesn’t require the heavy-handed use of so-called trendy directorial techniques to disguise it’s paucity in all areas.

Body Shots is slick, glossy, and totally unnecessary. If you’re tempted to watch it go to a club instead.

(Reviewed 2nd March 2002)