Meet Kelly

MEET KELLY showcases plus-size performer Kelly Shibari, who touts her video as a break- through for bigger girls in the Adult industry. I had seen Kelly acting in Mark Baranowski's MR. DISSOLUTE (see my IMDb review if of interest) and was curious about her, but this overlong (159 minutes) Digital Sin opus is underwhelming

Plus-size in porn has always been around as a niche - I enjoyed mail-order VHS programs about 25 years ago featuring British starlets and homegrown women like Miss Twin Towers on the Big Top label, a direct forerunner of Score which also dabbles in the genre.

Currently a borderline big beauty Siri has crossed over into mainstream XXX videos, so why not Kelly? After watching her overlong and repetitive interviews plus four lengthy sex scenes, I am attracted to her as a person but she fails to make the grade as a performer.

Video plays more like a pro-am exercise than a meeting of equals. The seasoned veterans paired with Kelly, in a cast which seems a spin-off of her earlier appearance for director Eddie Powell in BIG GIRLS ARE SEXY 4, overshadow her because they bring expertise and energy to their job, which is to arouse the viewer(s) as a sexual stimulant.

Unfortunately Kelly is passive, the object of all the worship but hardly participating. She goes through the motions of a blow job or sex yet seems uninvolved, and I found the result unappealing. With so much competition for the viewers' eyeballs out there, especially in the XXX space, I don't think she clears the bar.

Her personable interview revelations disturbed me only in that she gave up a successful (per her estimation) career as a Hollywood production designer/set designer in 2007 on the occasion of a writers' strike that rendered her temporarily unemployed to turn to porn. The self-realization she was achieving as a behind-the-scenes force in show biz apparently was not enough, as 7 or 8 years later she is still an adult performer -mainly via social media, not returning to her previous "legit" profession. That's her choice, but I am still reluctant to give a pass to the meat-grinder that XXX is, especially for women where longevity in the biz is a rare exception.

She makes a big deal of her "first porn anal", meaning first time she's had anal sex on camera. Mr. Pete does the honors and she notes that a secret signal for him to stop was misinterpreted and he kept going, whomping away at her for an additional ten minutes. The resulting vignette is understandably tedious and with anal sex (especially from European starlets) so widely available nowadays this "first" is only of interest to Kelly herself and not to a wide audience.

Similarly, her troilism scene with Euro vets Ramon Nomar and Mick Blue is minus the d.p. they would deliver back on the Continent, and is frankly boring. Her segment with similarly plus- size, heavily tattooed Scarlet LaVey is merely an excuse to trot out glass dildos and butt plug. Big superstar spotlight opposite James Deen is boring more due to Deen than Kelly's fault, as she points out his "you know what to expect" performance is that - the overrated XXX icon has a set routine that for me is usually the let-down in any video. Personally I find him to be the fly in the 21st Century ointment of porn the way the frequently cast "legend" (give me a break) Bill Margold was in the '70s.

Sum total of the experience for me was an interest to see Kelly back in indie non-X projects like MR. DISSOLUTE, or even better contributing behind the camera -what's wrong with that?