Being Riley

"Being Riley" proudly proclaims its award-winning collaborators, and aims at being a big deal worthy of its own awards. Alas, 3-1/2 hours of new footage of the great Riley Reid humping turns out to be all about the money; namely, offering the young star big bucks to go anal/d.p., the surest route to oblivion.

Admittedly, some of Riley's peers and frequent co-stars like Casey Calvert are anal specialists. But for four decades now, porn is marketed and even created on the basis of niche market ballyhoo - "first anal" and "first interracial" the most common such advertising ploys. This takes on idiotic extremes, as when a lesbian superstar has her "first boy/girl", as if true fans were really waiting breathlessly for her to take the dick plunge.

So Riley, after four years in the Adult biz and participating in approximately one release per week, acceded to going anal for the specialist subsidiary tushy.com of the currently hot distributor blacked.com. Seeing her in action is a turn-on, but this particular video is a pretentious turn-off.

Lansky has been cranking out numerous slick, boring mixed-combo videos for blacked.com which I judge to be about 5 steps down from the genre standard set by Jake Steed over 15 years ago with his amusing, irreverent "Little White Chicks, Big Black Monster Dicks" series. The niche label follows exactly the same template as Steed, but minus any entertainment value or personality.

In the same vein, "Being Riley" is generic sex with RR, gussied up in attractive settings and clear (not artistic) photography. To this formula, Lansky with co- writer Oriana Small has added a fake storyline, to lure in fans of story features like me. He succeeded in luring, but this script is truly terrible, smarmy, repetitive and merely designed to promote a porno life style, mocking the straight world (but not in an amusing way, more of a preachy approach) and advocating free & open ("nonjudgemental") lovemaking with numerous partners.

A talented filmmaker could take that theme and run with it, but instead we have Riley and her talented co-star Aidra Fox smiling endlessly, giggling like teens planning a slumber party, and mouthing platitudes over and over advocating sexual fulfillment and avoiding narrow-mindedness. It's porno's version of pop psychology.

Richie Calhoun gets screen credit (I approve of that) for a brief, uneventful attempt at a dramatic opening wherein Riley gets mad at him and gives back her engagement ring. After this phony scene, she heads from Greenview (wherever that is) to L.A. to stay at the luxurious digs of her high-school BFF Sarah (Aidra). Sarah proselytizes on a freer sex life and after a quality lesbian scene in bathtub and bed with Riley, sics her on stud Mick Blue.

His high-rise room with a view is the setting for Riley's anal deflowering, on a convenient mattress near the picture windows. At this point I knew where the next 3 hours were headed because Lansky drives the anal theme into the ground. In a quality film, take Radley Metzger's "Barbara Broadcast" which I coincidentally re-watched right after "Being Riley", anal sex is integrated into the story and sexual content, but for this video it is a be-all and end-all, pardon the pun.

Next up is a threesome of Riley, Aidra and Sarah's "sugardaddy" Manuel Ferrara, in which he of big, thick cock does his thing quite well, as usual. The drawback here is the premise that Aidra as Sarah is living it up in an open relationship with big bucks flowing freely. The reality of her being a porn star and the question of where that ends and prostitution begins is begged by this benefactor gimmick of the lousy script. Also, at no time other than the nominal Richie/Riley opening scene does dramatic interest enter the giddy, hedonistic, Utopian porn world depicted here.

After anal with Manuel, a "6 Months Later" card announces Riley settled down on her own (with no explanation of her cash flow) in L.A. She chats with Aidra and then visits her boyfriend Rob, played by blacked.com veteran stud Rob Piper who is given a token bit of humanization, merely token, before humping Riley and treating her to an even longer cock in the posterior.

Finale has a confusing "1 Year Later" card which actually translated into 6 months passing since the last 6 months card. With pretty gowns and ultra-high heels on the girls chit-chat and Riley introduces a flashback of her fantasy come true, namely her current lover James Deen sharing her with another guy, Erik Everhard as "Mark". For Erik, this is a virtually non-speaking role, delivering more anal and a tortuously methodical series of d.p.'s, where we're supposed to believe that ultimate porno pro Riley is learning new skills on the job before our eyes.

Amplifying that phony notion is a lengthy interview with RR and Aidra which is basically a paean to anal sex, perhaps contractually mandated, to transparently promote the new "tushy.com" label, nominally a Spanish company though Chatsworth is its true stomping ground. Lansky and company clearly think their audience is made up of idiots, and who am I to judge?

Coda has Sarah and Riley beginning another lesbian scene, which is as brief as possible. Their earlier bout was without toys but true to the label's Prime Directive, emphasized anilingus and anal fingering.

This one is a series of four Tushy clips starring Riley Reid connected into a narrative. That means that this simple story of Riley discovering sexual freedom and enlightenment via sodomy is punishingly Cleopatrian in length. Three and half hours. Four scenes. It's the modern way. It's good, Riley is adorable and all the scenes on their own are okay. You get a girl/girl anal, a one boy/Two girl anal, a black guy anal (sigh, "interracial is still a thing...) and a two boy/one girl anal. About 3 hours worth. To watch as a feature, it needs editing. As a collection of scenes, it's fine.