These videos, often made lavishly and with relatively big budgets and talent rosters, are termed "parodies" in the industry, apparently to exploit a loophole that stems from the artistic freedom of comedians (think: Saturday Night Live) to lampoon works of art and celebrities. The NINE 1/2 WEEKS XXX version (it even retains the awkward "nine" spelled out on screen like Adrian Lyne's original) is a self-important imitation, not a parody in the dictionary definition of that term.
Auteur David Lord's list of credits is mighty unappealing, so I didn't expect much. What I got was little more than watching a bevy of large-breasted porn actresses go through their paces, with a desultory "storyline" attached.
That plot is of course easy to follow since it apes the Lyne film, and Lord even names the principal fictional characters Kim and Mickey. But the entire project, overlong at TWO 1/2 HOURS of running time, falls apart immediately due to poor casting.
The DVD extras include auditions for the main roles, and I found it interesting that a Black actor was considered for Mickey (his reading doesn't impress) and even the bombastic Bridgette B. amusingly tries for the second lead femme, a part that went instead to more normal (comparatively speaking) sized Capri Cavanni. Ironically, after watching the entire feature, I thought bubbly, emotional Capri should have gotten the lead Kim, rather than the superstar Summer Brielle who muffs the assignment.
While Brielle is a pretty but wooden lump for over two hours, the real stinker here is James Deen. Clearly the most employable man in porn these days, he consistently leaves me cold - his walk-through performances slightly less scintillating than his uppity interviews (reminds me at times of Mr. Put-on himself, Joaquin Phoenix). His underplaying as Mickey is strictly dulls-ville and it is clear that Lord did nothing to encourage him to be better.
Brielle certainly looks beautiful, especially when clothed in attractive outfits (that take the edge off her mighty-fake looking breasts), and all the gals are diverting. But the script credited to Lord and "D Cypher" is poor. The duo's games-playing and the ups and downs of their whirlwind romance are merely a slender thread on which Lord hangs his requisite sex set-pieces: a stupid lunch break session where Mickey's arranged for Kim to boss around two porn thesps (including striking beauty Courtney Taylor) for the fun of it; a really cheap imitation of a sex club where tired strippers wiggle around and Lord himself gets serviced as a decrepit looking customer getting more than a lap dance, and the big finale.
That finale is so long (runs over 42 minutes of near-continuous sex) that the DVD even splits it in half as a "bonus" for voyeurs with a shorter attention span. It consists of Brielle in a motel in an impromptu three-way with busty Eva Karrera and Tommy Gunn, cross-cut with Deen servicing Nikki Delano (after Brielle stormed off at the prospect of sharing Deen with her).
Given the video's title and its source material, the expected bittersweet ending of Kim rejecting Mickey's possibility of starting over and ending their relationship forever still manages to disappoint thank to Summer's vague, staring non-performance. Just as doing a thousand or so gonzo videos has eroded Deen's edge, the popular Summer has been bound, wrapped and gagged a few too many times in her fetish video career to be expressive - no need for a bondage girl to emote.
