Sixpack Annie

As a serious moviegoer, you should periodically spend ninety minutes or so with a picture such as this one. You will clear your mind of such considerations as camera angles, lighting effects, directorial nuances, and similar aesthetic clutter. There will be no demands on your analytical abilities or your appreciation of cinematic excellence. You will forget your troubles, lose yourself in the sheer mindlessness of it all, and probably enjoy yourself immensely.

Warning: Don't watch it a second time. You will be left wondering how you not only could have sat through it once, but genuinely liked it.

Then watch it a third time to see which previous impression was correct. I dare you.

Silly throughout, you will never get tired from it. Here you have a all-American girl who works at a diner. Here aunt is behind in her payments, and she meets all kinds of weirdos in Miami, Florida. She meets a man with a Napoleon complex, a conman, and other unsavory characters. But she knows how to have fun in a time of uncertainty. This movie has lots of sex appeal to boot. And it's good for a hot Saturday night.

3 out of 5 stars.

In a career neatly balancing mainstream episodic television like THE DUKES OF HAZZARD and exploitation cinema such as COVER GIRL MODELS, Lindsay Bloom is by far the cutest starlet to appear in the latter: providing a girl-next-door innocence within the infamously risque guilty-pleasure drive-in cinema...

Herein a perfect fit for the rural hangout romp SIXPACK ANNIE, where her titular character realizes a plot-line halfway through... to find a sugar daddy with enough cash to help her aunt pay for the family diner, where she waitresses with AMERICAN GRAFFITI bellhop Jana Bellan, a cherubic brunette to Bloom's adorable blonde...

It's a shame the pair couldn't be involved in more of the first half's small-town adventures... including run-ins with handsome local Bruce Boxleitner and a boisterous good-old-boy sheriff... since the their down-home-dazzling presence lights up the grungy one-horse town, from pickup-truck-cruising-exteriors to beer-guzzling-barroom interiors...

But once in Florida... where Annie gets dodgy advice from older bubbly-blonde Louisa Moritz, being thrust from one male dud to the next (mostly without sidekick Belllan)... the second-half fails to compliment an actress with enough natural charm to have carried things as far as she could - as SIXPACK ANNIE the character far exceeds the movie.

Throughout the 70's, we saw the rise and fall of the b-movie subgenre known as the redneck film. With the likes of Smokey and the Bandit, Gator Bait, and Walking Tall all packing in the theaters, Six-Pack Annie stands on its own as perhaps the Marx Brothers equivalent of the redneck film. No, its not as funny or witty as a Marx Bros film, but it is jam packed with mile a minute jokes. Okay, so 99% of the jokes are pretty weak and lowbrow, but what this film has is energy. The pacing is fantastic, and whether or not the jokes are funny, it is so consistent with one one-liner after another, it becomes a charming, little, stupid movie.

Basically the film revolves around poor, dimwitted, but sincere Annie trying to save the family restaurant, by finding herself a `Sugar Daddy' in the `big city', Miami. Its your basic country girl in over her head story as Annie's slow, innocent, bumpkin ways crash into all these city folk sensibilities and highjinks ensue. Features cameos by well-faded vaudeville comedians Stubby Kaye and Doodles Weaver. A good notch above other drive-in redneck cinema, obviously some effort was put into it, and it works as a guilty pleasure lowbrow comedy. Its really too bad the makers didn't seem (according to the imdb) to do anything else, because its a good 70's redneck film.

This likably stupid film should only be watched by people who can turn their brains off, and any intellectual analysis of this film is missing the point. Predictably, the two leads are played by busty women, but these two have a certain charm that is usually lacking in films like this. This movie is also full of silly sexual jokes, but somehow, I actually found many of them to be funny. Perhaps this is because this is a good-natured film, and therefore things never get too raunchy. Whatever the reason, this is a solid viewing selection if you're in the mood for some undemanding fun.