Dream Teens 5

Too glib for my taste, Hannah Harper's gimmick episode of her Sin City Teen series is nonetheless entertaining. It has no screenplay credit, perhaps (I'm guessing) because auteur HH had second thoughts.

Starting with the humorous opening credits presenting the movie as if it were an actual TV show "Teen Star Search", with the young ladies competing for $100,000 and an exclusive contract with Adult label Sin City, it plays as a Reality TV show but with some of the jabs reserved for the industry that feeds HH: Adult Entertainment.

The satire does blur the line between reality and fiction, as Hannah, billed in the end credits as Herself (though clearly she is acting, not doing a star cameo), plays a Hollywood agent specializing in new femme talent, which she did in real life while maintaining her own career acting in porn.

Barrett Blade is named Barrett Blade as director of the show, but is credited as The Director, acknowledging that he is just acting. Two very amusing guest stars as judges are Voodoo as Ms. Vee, camping it up as a gay choreographer offering the young contestants lots of bad advice, while Flick Shagwell, wearing an effective push-up bra which had me wondering if she'd suddenly gone for a boob job, is perfect as "Janet Dicksucinson", playing a porn star whose ditziness is clearly modeled after former model Janice Dickinson from her Tyra Banks "America's Next Top Model" appearances.

The contestants are not exactly household names: bad guy among the girls is Nadia Styles, who had a fairly decent career, while petite Sierra Sinn is the most impressive of the girls, but her credits have been nearly 100% gonzo. Least prominent of the girls is Courtney Simpson, familiar as a young lesbian icon to fans of Girlfriends Films, but otherwise mired in junk, bottom of the barrel videos.

An annoying aspect of the film, not present in earlier movies Hannah directed, is its sloppiness, with what seems like key scenes missing near the end, after a group-sex d.p. contest for the two finalists in the competition: Sierra and Annie Cruz. Hannah merely cuts to an unidentified (and jarring) scene in the future when Sierra, evidently the winner (even her victory is omitted), has become a porn diva, detestably smug and jaded. What has unspooled as light comedy is hardly up to the task of being a corrosive critique.