4
out of 5.00 -
Film:
4
Extras:
3
Video:
4
Audio:
5
-
11/16/2009
I've never really taken it easy on Eon McKai, or much of the rest of the alt world in porn. So much of it feels forced, like they're trying so hard to make a name that they delve into some immaturity. When the theme is louder than the action in your film, though, you have a problem, and that was McKai's problem with the
Doll Underground, a plodding, boring affair if there ever was one. Combined with Vivid's tendency towards the annoyingly hyperbolic, and I can't shake that they're just being unjustifiably smug.
But I have hope. Burning Angel Entertainment seems to be figuring things out now, not trying so hard to point out how different they are, and instead focusing on the technical aspects of production to make a quality product. That's never been a problem for McKai and Vivid; sometimes they just make their premise overwrite their technical sense. It's a pleasure to say that this is not the case with
Art School Girls are Easy (I keep wanting to type "made" instead of "are;" that would make for an interesting how-to manual). Instead, we get a well lit feature manages to balance intriguing alternatives to conventional porn without sacrificing quality and watchability.
Points for the Vivid Alt promo with Riley Mason in the beginning.
The comic strip in the beginning is cute, though I wish they would have proofread it. Misspellings? Really? Alright, so they're probably intentional, but it still screams illiteracy. That and the gratuitous use of the word "porno" gives that hint of eleven year old. Add in the pinch of drug references in the beginning (stop that please: the industry has a bad enough rep as it is), and I was a bit unsure, especially as that beginning scene has Pixie Pearl. Pixie is pretty, don't get me wrong, but she has all the presence of a block of granite in most films, and I'm afraid there aren't too many signs of a pulse here either. Stevie Hart isn't much more lively, and far less comfortable on camera. Reading the lines in her lap was just awful in this intentionally terribly acted sequence. I mean, it wasn't obvious enough that this was supposed to be terribly performed (I guess that makes it alt or something), as Pixie delivered her lines just fine. A few cartoon graphics and we're off to a scene that appears to be a couch outside of a crashed car. Okay. Sure. Shadowing the corners of the shots was a bit annoying as well, making me feel like I was watching it through a peephole. My television is small enough (what is this digital you speak of?); don't take more of it away from me. The sequence that follows is a nice girl-girl, a bit grainy on the video, but again, I think that was on purpose. The problem I note, and it's one I see in a lot of McKai's all girl scenes, is that it really just kind of flatlines. Not to say that the action is dead, but it doesn't have any peaks or valleys, no story arcs, no order to the action. It just kind of is. Meh.
The faux tracking lines fit the amateur Trent Reznor-with-a-Casio soundtrack, but it does get a bit tiresome at times as well. The whispering of "Mia" was grating. I don't know why. It just was. Very emo as well, in the sense that "no one has a clue but me" reeks in this nonsense bit of plot, the kind that would seem to appeal to those not old enough to buy this sort of thing. Just stop with the whispering! Narrate it normally! It would actually be a lot more effective that way as well, as it would show more confidence in her thoughts rather than whispering in the back of the room. And name-dropping Google grates on me personally - that has nothing to do with this film. I hit the chapter skip, just to get back to the action.
It's good action, too, which I would almost find disappointing if I really wanted to hate this film. Pixie is in action again, this time in a boy-girl scene with Stevie on the sidelines, seemingly pretending to take pictures, though she's using a still camera as though it were a video camera. My only technical complaint here is that the camera is too jumpy. I get that it's supposed to seem voyeuristic and amateur, but it gets almost to the motion sickness point. Good work otherwise, though, and like most of this film, it is very well lit - a common complaint of mine in this kind of film averted.
I can't speak to anything being groundbreaking here, just as I can't claim that McKai's previous work did what Vivid brags. Perhaps McKai doesn't even feel this way. Whatever the case,
Art School Girls are Easy is a good film, though not great. It manages to be a vanilla kind of alt, but considering some of the dross in the landscape, that's more of a compliment. They turned down the notion of extreme in favour of solid production, and the result is a clever film, rarely overdone, some good sex on film for those who might accuse the mainstream as being the habitat of bubbly bimbos.
By:
Oranje