Sexual Fidelity

My mind wandered while watching this Holly Randall Wicked Pictures drama, as its turgid dialog overwhelmed a serious, feminist message and the sex scenes dragged on for nearly three hours. Holly hogs most of the credits, and must be blamed for the show's mediocrity.

I favor serious cinema over the self-styled crowd-pleasing, facetious approach that permeates most mainstream movies recently, filled with wise cracks and special effects interruptions to the narrative. But the sin of dullness is important to avoid, and to name a random example of this easy trap to fall in came to mind: the awful remake of oh-so-serious Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" starring Bill Murray. Talk about dull!

Casey Calvert stars as a podcaster whose show, co-hosted by husband Brad Armstrong, deals with sex. Basically we have a podcast that is merely an update to a call-in show for radio, a porno standard that recently has been dusted off by pornographers and converted unconvincingly into a more au courant podcast. Story centers on Brad dropping his wife, basically seeking fresh horizons, and poor Casey's search for fulfillment solo.

This theme of abandonment is run into the ground by Randall, who has other male characters repeating the same callous treatment of their women. It's way too obvious to be effective.

With the help of her trusty engineer Jessie Lee (a busty, tattooed alt-porn girl seriously miscast), who acts as an amateur matchmaker looking out for our heroine, Casey falls in love with her sex expert guest on the show Seth Gamble, who also cruelly drops his jail-bait girlfriend Harmony Wonder right after having sex with her. Actor Gamble recites his lines without conviction, one of his worst performances.

Cornily, the floundering podcast finally becomes a hit after Brad leaves and Seth proves to be a popular guest for solo host Calvert. Director Randall injects herself personally into the action in an uncredited role as a TV producer who at film's end offers Casey the big opportunity to host a TV talk show on condition that Seth is her co-host. Will Casey sacrifice her progression toward self-realization and self-reliance in order to achieve career success? What of her burgeoning love affair with Seth? To answer these burning feminist-reimagined soap opera issues you have to tune in to "Sexual Fidelity".

Glaring defect of the movie is the opening reels devoted to a lengthy sex vignette of busty Kenzie Reeves' romance with her hubby replete with a bed covered in rose petals and lit by candles. We see Kenzie put in her ear buds while jogging to listen to Casey & Brad's podcast but otherwise her story is completely unrelated to the rest of the movie, reeking of a production decision to spice up the feature by injecting Wicked's new star, based on her title role in the label's "Captain Marvel" porn-parody.