Movie Review: Shortbus
Published October 30, 2006
All that said, I still prefer Shortbus to fake porno like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). It's good to see performers who aren't as manicured as usual, and the physical fearlessness and frankness is infinitely preferable to the cock-teasing coyness of almost every other movie selling sex. And when Mitchell keeps his revelations about sex in the comic range, he really hits on something: it's a great way to loosen the audience up for the topic. With a mite more skill, the sequence in which the pre-orgasmic therapist inserts a vibrating egg into her pussy and then has spastic reactions when her bored husband loses the remote control device and some guy tries to change the TV channel with it could have been one of the great slapstick sequences of all time.
Instead, Mitchell goes for pathos. The three leads all end up in tears and there's something forced about it, as if Mitchell and his actors confused misery with truth and were just too eager to show us. It's a far more demeaning form of exhibitionism than performing public sex acts.
All the same, the acting is unaffected and there are a lot of incidental pleasures. I especially enjoyed a young man's demonstration of how to be a model, and if you never thought you'd see a rim job in a "non-pornographic" movie, you probably never imagined you'd see a rim job like the one in Shortbus at all. For all the rote depressiveness, it's an enormously friendly movie, and it will give adults who aren't put off by zoo-naked sex more to talk about, even in disparagement, than anything showing at the Cineplex.
- Movie Review: Shortbus
- Published: October 30, 2006
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Art House, Video: Comedy, Video: Drama, Video: Urban
- Writer: Alan Dale
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Comments on this articleComments
"does anyone with XXX discs at hand pop Basic Instinct (1992) or Wild Things (1998) into the DVD for a five-minute whack before work?"
For Basic Instinct, yes to the Michael Douglas scene that dark-haired chick (not Sharon Stone) that almost looks and feels like a doggy-style rape, but is totally hot. The rest of the movie is not spank worthy.
Wild Things is NOT spank worthy, especially because we don't see that prude Neve's Campbell's breasts.
Neve Campbell and Sarah Jessica Parker are the biggest prudes when it comes to nudity. F*** them.
Thanks for the comments, Ty. I couldn't lose with Basic Instinct and Wild Things, because if I was wrong, and people do beat off to them, then it only proved my larger point that it's all porno.
Speaking of porny Brad Pitt, here's Robert Wilson's "Video Portrait" of him, released in conjunction with the December 2006 issue of Vanity Fair.
Out of 102 minutes, maybe 20 or so minutes are sex scenes, most of them at the beginning. [Mitchell, with commendable bluntness, has said he "wanted to break the audience's hymen" and deliberately shake people up a little.]
And, yes, sorry, Ty, but at least 2/3 of it is gay sex. The marketing campaign has done a fairly good job of preventing this from being 'ghettoized' as a gay movie. It's pretty charming and enjoyable - certainly more so than Nine Songs, which was a respectable dud but still a dud.
Thanks for the stats and the quotation, handyguy. I checked out your site and want to second your praise of the Janus Films collection--essential viewing for any dedicated movie lover.
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This movie sounded much better before I learned in this review that there is male gay sex and rim jobs.
BUT if the hetero sex is hot, and the movie is interesting, I'll check it.
God knows it has to be better than the last "non-porno" to have full on sex, "Nine Songs." That movie was horrible (and I love indie flicks!)!!!!!