3
out of 5.00 -
Film:
3
Extras:
3
Video:
3
Audio:
3
-
3/23/2007
Unlike the Paris Hilton sex DVD of a few years back, I'm guessing few people had any clue who Kim Kardashian even was before all this sex tape hubbub came about. Kim, even more so than Paris Hilton, is one of those "celebrities by default" - famous only because she's the daughter of a rather prominent (and now deceased) L.A. attorney, and has therefore made a lot of friends in Hollywood.
So while Kim may or may not be a "celebrity", what she does have going for her is that she's pretty darn good-looking. She certainly has the best body among all the celeb sex DVDs we've seen to date, and that more than anything else might explain why a lot of people have been looking forward to getting their hands on this release of
Kim Kardashian, Superstar.
So what's the verdict on the DVD? Well, it's a rather mixed bag, and how much "enjoyment" you get out of this title will depend on what you are expecting from it. As "celeb" footage goes, it's not too bad...but as arousing porn goes, it leaves a lot to be desired.
In case you didn't already know it, the guy who films the sex here and gets to fuck Kim is Ray J, whose biggest claim to fame is that he's the real-life brother of Brandy Norwood. And because he's responsible for shooting the footage you'll see on
Kim Kardashian, Superstar, he's going to be the focus of my first complaint about the video.
For starters, Ray J is
way too full of himself...almost to the point where one wants to turn the volume down. Naturally, it's hard to make a judgment about a person from the 40-minutes of footage that this DVD provides, but you'd think he'd know that we want to see Kim, not his face up in the camera telling us what a great director he is. And while Ray J does an adequate job in a lot of the angles he chooses, most of the footage isn't lit very well, and neither the penetration or the one pop-shot at the conclusion is picked up well by the video camera.
My second complaint is geared toward Vivid Pictures themselves, who appear to have done
a lot of tinkering with the original footage they were provided. Their biggest offense is in the apparent "looping" (i.e. showing more than once) of various sexual positions - particularly doggy style. The DVD is pretty short as it is at only 40-minutes, and I'm guessing Vivid looped a lot of the sex to make it "look" like the action between Kim and Ray J captured on tape was a lot longer than it actually was. There's also something going on with the audio, as Kim's sexual responses seem to be dubbed throughout most of the movie. Viewers will notice that when we can see her mouth, that her "moans and groans" don't match the audio...and most of the things she "says" during sex only are heard when the camera angle isn't on her face...giving me the impression that she never said those things at all - at least not while Ray J was videotaping her.
And speaking of the audio, Vivid has chosen to give the footage its own musical soundtrack, and hasn't even provided the option of turning it off in the DVD menus. Finally, there's an annoying watermark for Vivid's Kim Kardashian website that stays in the bottom right corner of the screen throughout the movie.
After all that, you're probably wondering if there's any redeeming value to this DVD at all...and, in fact, there is. As noted at the onset of this review, Kim is perhaps the hottest celebrity to do a sex tape, and despite all the problems listed above, it is fun watching her make out. We get to see her suck on Ray J's cock from both the P.O.V. and side angle, and we get to watch her take both doggy and missionary from a few different angles before the movie concludes with a hard-to-see cumshot that either lands in Kim's mouth or drips down onto her chest (I honestly couldn't make out which, if either, happened). I was disappointed that Kim didn't show off her tits more on camera (we only get to see them pop out from underneath her bra in a few shots), but overall Kim is probably a better sexual performer than Paris Hilton...and I'm guessing better in bed as well, although neither of these women exactly fit the definition of "porn star" (they're both rather reserved).
In an effort to supplement the fact that the Kim footage isn't very long, Vivid had included a second DVD in this release, that contains 5 bonus scenes from other releases, along with a whopping 20 trailers. The bonus scenes consist of the following: Monique Alexander and Tommy Gunn from
After Midnight; Stefani Morgan and Tommy Gunn from
Houseguest; Lanny Barby and Van Damage from
Intimate Strangers; Savanna Samson and Ben English from
Switch; and Briana Banks and Evan Stone from
Time For Briana.
I'm rating
Kim Kardashian, Superstar as average - but average as homemade adult celebrity videos go, not average as most adult releases go. While this is more of a curiosity than a DVD you're likely to "get your rocks off" to, it does have that voyeuristic amateur feel to it - as if you've come upon the naughty video of a friend or neighbor that you shouldn't be seeing.
So while it doesn't live up to the enormous hype (how could it?), I still think it's a title worth checking out...although I think it would have done much better had Vivid just left the footage alone and presented it in its "raw" (no pun intended) form instead of trying to "gloss it up" with edits and additional audio.
By:
Spooky