I Love You, You're Fired

Joanna Angel's approach to comedy is self-defeating: she stresses overacting and exaggeration, embarrassingly on view in this truly awful throwback of a rom-com made for Erika Lust's label. Screen Actors Guild gives an ensemble cast award annually, but this one would earn a Bad Acting ensemble cast distinction.

Vanna Bardot, the only player not covered with tattoos (hers are tiny and not that visible), takes the lead role of Danielle, pumping out false enthusiasm that quickly becomes tiresome. She's the boss, introduced handing out huge bonuses to her ad agency staff after a successful campaign. The script by Joanna and Shawn Alff is crammed with way too much dialogue, hardly scintillating, and leads off with a reference to "Game of Thrones", instantly dating the movie as out of date rather than hip.

Cliches fly fast and furiously: central rom-com conceit has her employee Shawn (Isiah Maxwell) wanting to get into her panties, but faced with the problem of fraternization with the boss. As co-worker Lana, Brooklyn Gray is cast as his lesbian confidante, giving Shawn advice and listening to his dumb schemes as to how to win Danielle's heart. She's given a stereotypical butch styling and awful dialogue. Failed subplot has her as sex partner to Charlotte Sins, yet another employee, who's married but getting a divorce. Lana keeps complaining at the level of "This is what I get for dating a straight woman", pretty lame. Charlotte doesn't even get a character name in a nothing role.

Title is derived, and even stated out loud by Vanna at the end of the 2-hours-plus show, from Shawn's dumb scheme to get fired so he can successfully date his former boss. That this makes no sense apparently didn't occur to Joanna or her partner in crime, that other Shawn -Alff.

Firm's new client is Brad, infatuated with his product Zesty Vest, no, not a satire of the successful SCOTTeVEST, but merely a vest that has several cords attached for charging your phone in one of several pockets. Quinton James plays Brad (aka Hot Crotch) as an extroverted pitchman who I voted Least Likely to Succeed in comedy. He's insufferable as Shawn's romantic rival, who actually gets to bed down Danielle in one of the movie's 3 sex scenes. Unlike porn in general nowadays, majority of the show is NonSex, so that I suspect Joanna aimed at successful crossover with a 69-minute R-rated cut. Fat chance.

Not to be outdone, Tommy Pistol is on hand in his expected hambone form, NonSex thankfully this time out. He has the temerity to re-channel his worn-thin Pee Wee Herman imitation as a prima donna of a puppeteer, inexplicably on the staff of Danielle's ad firm. He's inseparable from his puppet Ralph, bringing him to company meetings and insisting on the fiction that he's a real person.

Movie's big set-piece is a birthday party for Danielle organized by Shawn that also is a big launch party for their Zesty Vest campaign. Mercifully, Tommy (as Johnny Pistol) has only a brief puppet show at the party, trotting out his Pee Wee voices. It's barf time.

That show also features one of Joanna's troupe of tattooed ladies, busty Jessie Lee in a topless appearance popping out of a birthday cake for Danielle. The entire party scene is poorly directed, merely an excuse to tie up plot loose ends en route to the big 20-minute Isiah humps Vanna climax.

Production is chintzy, with Shawn's living room the same crummy set (with black & white paintings intact) used a hundred times on Gamma Entertainment productions as well as a bathroom set used endlessly for Gamma's Fantasy Massage series, redecorated here as a veterinary office for crew member Bryn Pryor to play Danielle's unfunny complainer regarding her obsession with her cat Cookie -who is played by a stuffed plush toy!

Ultimately, I began to think this was bad on purpose, that old Troma ploy that works with idiot audiences, but to listen to Joanna's self-serving interview, one would think she was shooting Bringing Up Baby or Some Like It Hot.