Hot Moves

This film seems to be the 80s version of American Pie: Four loser virgins who want to get laid make a pact to help each other and go about finding girls to screw. If you look at it closely, the characters are even similar and there's the one guy with the girlfriend who thinks that sex is the only thing important to him.

Anyway, the girls look great and there are heaps of funny scenes worth catching, especially at the end. So if you haven't seen it, check it out.

'Hot Moves' is one of the *many* "teen sex comedies" from the 80s. A few you may remember--'Porky's', 'Spring Break'--a couple you might know if you had Cinemax growing up. Most are on the level of 'Hot Moves'. This was a thrift store, VHS(!), find. I love this genre, and had never seen or heard of it before, so I faced the accusing glare of the cashier and gladly plunked down my .99 for what appeared to be an original video store rental copy.

It gets off to a bit of a clunky start, but once it gets rolling it's pretty fun. The plot is actually very similar to 'American Pie', and the four leads--who all look like actual high schoolers instead of the customary 80s teen who is played by a 35 year old--are all pretty charming and have good chemistry together. Save for the copious nudity, and there's a bunch (at one point there's a scene on a nude beach where a large group of women recreate the iconic scene from 'Chariots of Fire') it's all harmless fun. Not a movie for a Women's Studies major or anyone with an allergy to the 80s, but a decent time if you like the genre.

Hot Moves features four teenage boys - only two of whom have anything like an established personality by the time the movie ends - looking for sex on the beach during summer holidays. The movie's only real source of life are the street performers the movie spends such a long time showing us: break dancers, tap dancers, body builders and a crappy mime.

Indeed it cuts to these so frequently you almost forget the so-called main characters and their boring shenanigans. When the movie remembers it's supposed to show us their trying to get laid we get dull and episodic encounters like one of the boys being preyed on by a woman who turns out to be a man (a fact that will be immediately obvious to the viewer), and another unlikely scene in which Michael Zorek, the fat kid from Private School, accidentally knocks over a candle in a waitress's house. Luckily the fat kid's friends are on hand, having been watching through the window, and put the blaze out with a garden hose. Uh huh.

To up the movie's nudity content, there is a scene where the boys spy on a nudist beach, and see a bunch of naked women who look suspiciously like nude models in between classier jobs running in unison. If so many beautiful women are available, naked, running around at this beach, why don't the boys try their luck there instead of with the predictably prudish lot they find on their home turf? Could it be that the producers didn't have the money to pay these naked women to be naked for more than a minute or so of screen time?

Overall, Hot Moves is pretty forgettable.

"Hot Moves" wasn't exactly a big grosser when it was released to theaters, a big reason probably being that the teenage sex comedy genre was all but dead at that time. But I think a bigger reason why the movie never took off was because it's an AWFUL movie. For starters, there's no real plot on display here - it's pretty much just a collection of vignettes with the loosest of threads holding them together. And while the movie attempts to be comic with just about every vignette, the results are absolutely without any laughs. When it comes to sex and nudity, there is less of that here than you might think - I think there are only three scenes where nudity is on display (though the second scene is jam-packed with naked women.) The cast shows some talent, but the way they are directed makes them come across as alike, without any individualism. There's nothing in this movie that may make it worth a rental to anyone.

The move was obviously made with the Porky's genre in mind. Unfortunately it was retardedly funny, and the naked women every 15 minutes sucked you in. Total guilty pleasure. I would not rent it, but if it was real late night pay-cable (on a commercial channel this movie would be horrendous), I might watch it again - as long as no one else knew.