Quiet Days in Hollywood

I think they must have had some reason for making this movie, but at this moment I'm at a loss to deduce it.

In Hollywood, California we see one of those sexual roundelays. A has sex with B, B with C, C with D, and so on until we get to H, who returns back to have sex with A. The characters include bisexuals, hookers, transients, power couples, people from all races and all walks of life. Perhaps it is means to show us how we really are having sexual contact with certain types of people we can't even imagine. Or maybe it is showing that our ostensibly divergent lives are all one interconnected web. Or maybe it just doesn't mean jack shit.

NUDITY REPORT

Natasha Gregson Wagner is seen naked from every angle, but the best scenes are seen through glass, or from a distance.

Meta Golding shows most of a breast having sex with her gangster boyfriend in a carwash, then most of her buns after being raped by the lawyer in the restroom of the restaurant she works in.

Tammy Parks and Paige Kimberly Livingston flash their breasts for the gay actor at the Oscars.

There is a brief bit of male rear nudity, and Hilary Swank takes a shower, but holds her breasts in her arms so that nothing is seen other than the level of bathing suit action.

DVD info from Amazon.

no widescreen
no meaningful features

I do know this. None of the couplings is especially interesting, and the dialogue - well, the screenplay was written in German and translated into English, so you can imagine how well it captures the essence of our daily lives. It appears to me that the director and screenwriter have never even been to the United States, let alone to Hollywood, and it's possible that they are aliens who have never even been to our planet, because I didn't actually recognize any humanoid behavior among the characters.

A good indicator is that filmcritic.com, normally a source of chatty reviews, wrote a two word summary, "stupid ... avoid"

Tuna's Thoughts

This film rested in well-deserved obscurity until Hilary Swank, who has a minor role in the film, won her Oscar. Not to say that they were being commercial, but they changed the packaging and ads to look like she was the star, and re-released it. It is essentially a series of vignettes, all of them with some sexual theme or element, and all with very loosely connected characters in Hollywood. We have celebrity flashers, hookers, waitresses, petty thieves, rich swingers with an open marriage, lawyers, gay best actor winners and their junkie boyfriends, and all of this is supposed to be what Hollywood is like. The narrative style obscures what passes for plot by such tricks and inter-cutting two scenes that happen at different times. I ended up doing something I rarely do. I fast forwarded through the last 20 minutes. It was that, or sleep through it.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: one and a half stars. filmcritic.com 1/5, Apollo 58/100

The People Vote ...

With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDB readers say 5.6/10, Apollo voters 54/100.

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a D. (Tuna D+) Weak, unrealistic dialogue, and the movie really doesn't seem to have any point.