Seen 20 years after it was shot, Bud Lee's "Desiree" is more quaint than compelling, dealing with the Y2K scare of the last century that turned out to be a false alarm. With Stephanie Swift starring in the title role it is nonetheless entertaining Adult content.

She plays the founder of a software company, riding high with its development of a program to cure the problem of PC's expected to be wiped clean at the onset of the millennium due to a computer glitch in their calendar programming. Her right-hand man at the company Tyce Bune has known Desiree since the third grade and is carrying a secret torch for her affections.

Fly in the ointment is Tyce's "no strings" girlfriend Morgan, wonderfully played by busty bleached blonde superstar Dakota as a very modern femme fatale. She's out to steal the valuable program with Tyce as her unwitting pawn, but good triumphs over evil in the end.

Lee handles this material, written by two of his top scripters Griffin Mill and George Kaplan, with aplomb, but is let down by the poor casting of his leading man. Bune reminds me of those 4-F male leads of Hollywood films during World War II (think: Sonny Tufts or William Prince), bland and cast merely because so many male superstars were off supporting the war effort. His flat readings and unsexy persona make the inevitable romantic clinch with Swift far less exciting than a superstud would.

Because the mansion with pool location reminded me so much of another Lee film for Adam & Eve, "Wildflower" starring his wife Asia Carrera - Devin Wolf from that feature would have made a perfect hero for "Desiree".

Logistically, another drawback is that all scenes seem to have been shot at the same location (saving time and money), hurting the continuity and credibility of the picture. That includes a lengthy orgy staged at a party that Dakota drags Swift to attend, in which 9 guest stars hump away with abandon -quality XXX content if a bit much. Another flaw is having a finale sex scene for Bune and Swift in an upstairs bedroom, when Stephanie spends the rest of the film sleeping on a mattress placed on the floor of the ground floor of her unfurnished (but lavish in size) mansion. This was shot in June 1997 and most likely released later that year, though IMDb listed it as a 1999 release, with no evidence other than the assumption of timeliness re: Y2K fears.

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