Getting It On

Simple-minded sex farce aims for sly smiles. On that level, it is amiable enough. All the actors seem to be having a genial enough time. There's not much else to tell -- just silly suburban hijinks, but nothing I found particularly offensive, or particularly interesting. But it was on a local UHF station while I worked out at a hotel gym, and for that it filled the bill nicely.

This was filmed in my neighborhood when I was a Freshman in High School. I was an extra in the school auditorium scene where the "sex tape" is shown, Want to know more, email me. This was originally called 'American Voyeur' when I went to the premiere where the mayor of Hickory, NC gave Olsen a key to the city, with a crowd full of people dressed to the 9's. Then, a coming-of-age flick movie came up on the screen; nice surprise for that crowd.

Two high school video nerds use cameras to peep on classmates in their underwear. No hilarity ensues. The cast actually appears to be playing a coming of age sex comedy straight! And (almost) without the sex...

Putting aside the creepy and legally actionable invasion of privacy premise, Mr. William Olsen, if you are trying to make one of the hundred or so no budget 80s teen romps that came out in the wake of Porky's - many direct-to-VHS - start by writing a few JOKES. If your budget is so small that driving to an audio-video store in a borrowed Gremlin counts as an action scene, if the best film stock you can afford has resolution below the quality of a late night infomercial, if your cast has less experience than the theatre department of the local community college, and your cameraman has to use in situ track lighting, you can still get by as long as the viewer has something to laugh at and a few busty co-eds. That's the basic formula. But here we get little of either.

The leaden pace is a hindrance as well. TV sitcoms also lack cinematic flair and are shot on only two or three sets. But any sitcom producer knows that all that is forgivable if you can wring some laughs out of the situation and keep things moving. A little character humour, some insult comedy, a bit of bug-eyed hyperbole, a few classic set up and payoff exchanges, a squirmy situation or two... Throw us SOMETHING. A badumbump joke. A prop gag. A pratfall. Manufacture a laugh and then push things ahead to the next setup.

No sex comedy with this little gratuitous nudity should be this utterly devoid of guffaws too. This is what results from failing at your one job.

"Getting It On" takes a seedy, repugnant premise, and then fails to go anywhere even particularly smutty with it. It's a movie about a teenager who apparently has hidden cameras in multiple areas around town filming girls taking their clothes off and having sex... and then makes you wait more than half the length of the movie before it shows you a glimpse of bare breast.

If this is confusing, it's nothing compared to the movie's "plot", which receives so little exposition that the movie makes little, if any, sense. I understood that the movie's protagonist has a flair for filming girls without them realising it, and also likes his next door neighbour. He has the typical goofy, obnoxious best friend who encourages him into emulating this behaviour when he is around the girl of his dreams, when he should just be "being himself".

I didn't really understand the point of the voyeuristic sequences, when the main character watches, for example, a group of girls having a pillow fight he has apparently filmed. This is, I guess, what sets the movie apart from other teen T'n A flicks, but in the movie itself it amounts to nothing. It could have been sleazily exploited to show more skin, and let's face it, it probably should have been! This is why people watch these movies, after all. However there is so little nudity in the movie, and the kid's voyeurism adds nothing to the story, so what was the point of it?

At one point it seems that his creepy hobby is going to save the day when his best friend is about to be sent to an all boys' school due to misbehaviour. The boys get a prostitute off the street, take her to a weird fancy dress party where both adults and teens are in attendance and the best friend dresses like a Klansman, and have the hooker seduce the kid's dad while on videotape.

They then play the film on the TV set the dad and his wife are watching, so that the wife can see her husband's adultery. What was the point of this? Revenge? Blackmail would have seemed a more obvious option. The response of the couple is even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Overall though, I enjoyed this movie. It's not as repugnant as it could have been, and I couldn't help but like the two main characters.

Wow is this a bad film,even by T&A standards. Other reviews have said it well...Not funny at all,creepy/sleazy story (this coming from a fan of R rated teen sex comedies),bland acting and ALMOST NO NUDITY. To make things even worse the film is shot poorly and the print is very dark and flat,i'm sure at least partly due to next to zero budget.

Who came up with the brilliant idea to make a T&A comedy about a guy secretly video taping women undressing,and then make it not funny with barely any nudity!?

I am telling you as a T&A connoisseur-avoid this movie at all costs,its a complete waste and there is nothing to see here.The DVD cover is the only thing good about Getting It On.