The Pickup Player

This Penthouse video is different in that a 1-shot filmmaker Patrick Kay handled all the creative input, giving fans a respite from the assembly-line product of the usual directors. Bad news is that he didn't do a very good job.

Immediately alarming is the 2-1/2 hour running time, compared to 90-minute Penthouse features being the norm. The extra length does not translate into anything interesting happening.

It's the dull, egotistical saga of Danny Mountain as the title character, something of an unfunny braggart who takes the same territory as the popular Tim Meadows Saturday Night Live "The Ladies Man" routine and runs it into the ground.

Mountain has created a website concerning how to pick-up & f*ck a woman in 15 minutes. Rather than riffing on Andy Warhol, he is lampooning the real-life James Toback, who as director showed his personal fetish to the world in "The Pick-Up Artist", a forgotten film that someday will be revived because Robert Downey Jr. back in his druggist days played the title role.

I knew Toback personally back in the '80s and he did try to pick up nearly every woman he met walking down the street - I witnessed his act in person on Times Square one time and it was more strange than amusing.

The six vignettes show guys using Danny's advice and lame pick-up lines, all of which is meant to be amusing but turns out to be flat as a pancake. The pretty gals hump as usual, and big names like Asa Akira, Vicki Chase and McKenzie Lee do not disappoint in the prurient department. Alexia Rae not surprisingly wins breast in show honors.