My Tutor

My Tutor, a shameless exploration of arrested male teen-age sexual fantasy, is a forgettable film for everybody except the kids who were going through puberty when the film was released. For those fortunate viewers, however, the film is a heady trip down memory (and mammary) lane. Matt Lattanzi (Mr. Olivia Newton John) will astonish you with his wooden acting and breathy voice. Crispin Glover will make you howl with his mannered delivery -- especially as he does a turn or two on the S/M wheel of a friendly neighborhood bordello. Caren Kaye delights as the world-wise French tutor who fuels young Lattanzi's vivid imagination with her nocturnal skinny dips in the family pool. Also notable: the jaw-dropping title pop tune warbled over the opening credits as limber vixens are put through the paces of an aerobic workout.

One of the more prominent teen exploitation sex romps of the early 1980s. My Tutor is the same type of thing we saw in Private Lessons. It's all basically a teenage boy's fantasy about having an affair with a beautiful older woman. Every so often you hear about this kind of thing happening in real life, so there may even be a little more to the concept than pure fantasy.

Matt Lattanzi plays the lucky young man in this film. For those of you who may have forgotten about this guy, he was kind of the Kevin Federline of the 1980s. He was a back-up dancer on the set of Xanadu who somehow won Olivia Newton-John over. The two were married for several years. Lattanzi plays a young man named Bobby. He seems nice enough, but is very shy with women. He also has just flunked his final exam in French class, and will have to re-take it and do very well or Yale will not let him attend in the fall. Bobby really doesn't want to go to Yale. He'd rather study astronomy at UCLA. Not a bad choice actually. I'm sure the women there are much better-looking! His father will hear nothing of astronomy, though! He hires a beautiful older woman to teach Bobby French, but Bobby is understandably more interested in winning her over! Caren Kaye plays Terry Green, the tutor. She is a stunningly beautiful woman who shows us plenty of what she has to offer! Yum! The bulk of the film details her attempts to teach Bobby French, and his attempts to become her man.

The film has a few dumb subplots that go nowhere. One deals with Terry's idiotic ex-boyfriend trying to hook back up with her. Another deals with Bobby's mother and their domestic help pulling the wool over her eyes. Crispin Glover is pretty funny as Bobby's best friend who is frantically trying to get laid. (weren't we all back then?) My Tutor is very, very light on plot. It mostly exists to titillate the audience, but there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing pretentious, and nary a serious moment in the entire romp, unless you count Bobby's wreck of his motor scooter later on.

The film is hurt by some really really awful music and songs. It is also badly under-lit. Lattanzi is a better actor than you might expect. His voice is a little high, but that fits this character pretty well. The film is filled with gobs of nudity and sexual situations. Take my word for it... you will get what you paid for in terms of t&a.

Considering what this film tries to be, and what it actually accomplishes, it is worth about 6 of 10 stars. A harmless romp from a much more innocent era of film-making.

The Hound.

I saw this movie when I was a kid and since the plot has been gone over numerous times I won't even get into that. Suffice to say, what you see is what you get. This movie falls into the "male hormone" genre of movies but it really wasn't so bad, the movie was tasteful compared to some of the garbage that's out today and it actually had a somewhat interesting plot with decent chemistry among the leads so girls could actually find it watchable as well as males. The setting was quite pretty as well. Make no mistake though, this is geared directly toward the teenage boy. The movie doesn't even try to be original but I liked how both the leads characters' were actually-well-developed somewhat. The movie's main flaw is the totally awful title but for what it is it's all right and I'd actually rate it a 5 or 6, you could do worse with a movie of this type.

Cut from the same cloth as Private Lessons (1981) and Risky Business (1983), coming-of-age teen sex comedy My Tutor is pure male fantasy fulfilment, in which virginal teenager Bobby Chrystal (Matt Lattanzi), desperate to pop his cherry, is handed the answer to his problems by his parents when they hire sexy tutor Terry Green (Caren Kaye) to help him pass his French exam.

Having had several sleazy but unsuccessful sexcapades with his equally desperate best friend Jack (the always excellent Crispin Glover), Bobby is more than happy to start learning about 'les oiseaux et les abeilles' from his tasty teacher, who not only knows her way round a french verb, but being a decade older than him, is also pretty familiar with the workings of a man's body!.

Opening with a roomful of women suggestively wriggling, jiggling, gyrating and thrusting their way through an aerobics routine, My Tutor is all about the irresistible allure of the female physical form, and barely a minute passes without some gratuitous female nudity on screen. Naturally, this makes for perfect fodder for hormonal teenage boys, but in addition to all the bare bums and breasts, the film also manages to pack in some remarkably solid performances from its likable leads (whose acting careers really deserved to have been better) and quite a bit of heart as well, Bobby not only discovering how to have fun on his back but also learning to stand on his own two feet against his overbearing father (Kevin McCarthy).

While it's a little far fetched, perhaps, to believe that the young, athletic and clearly very handsome Bobby wouldn't be the centre of attention for girls his own age (maybe it has something to do with his somewhat effeminate voice), My Tutor is still extremely enjoyable nonsense for the duration.

In reference to the previous user comment: I was one of those fortunate enough to go though puberty shortly after this film was released. Not a great movie, by any means, but for those of us to young to go into the "back room," this movie was a perfect answer. Unfortunately (or very fortunately, depending on how you look at it), they don't make films like this anymore. Teensploitation movies now are all very farcical and don't even try to take themselves seriously. Once you get past all the T&A, in this movie, you start to feel sorry for the actors in this movie who actually have some talent. They seem to be trying very hard to make a good film while carrying some of the blandest people ever to grace the silver screen. If you long for some fond memories, pick this up on a boring weekend while everyone else is out of town.