Killing Candy

three ex-cons (chubby nerd Danny Baldwin, untalented rapper Coolio, and "Kiss the Girl"'s Alex McArthur hatch a ridiculous scheme to kidnap b-movie starlet Candi (Jenya Leno, who frankly looked much hotter in her memorable guest spot on 'The Shield') Not a bad mover, per say, but the leaps in logic are just too much too sustain it. Furthermore shouldn't the movie be called "Stealing Candi" with an I instead of a Y?? C'mon now.

Eye Candy: Jenya Leno shows her ample bosom twice

My Grade: C+

Where I saw it: Showtime

It's sleazy. It's nasty. It's also got Coolio in it. But despite a few drawbacks, Stealing Candy just about delivers the goods... if you're looking for an erotic thriller with a bit more to it than T & A. Don't expect deep psychological drama of a girl taken prisoner and forced to do an X rated Internet clip. There is however, a decent enough set-up, a pretty good twist halfway through (although I would have saved it till the end) and reasonable performances from a cast that could charitably be described as B list, and on that subject...

The 'world renowned ' actress at the centre of this plot is simply awful in the bit of movie-making we see her do, so the chances of her earning a multi-million pound deal from a major studio seem... well, impossible. Even if she did get her thrupenny bits out for thousands of web geeks. And while we're discussing unlikely scenarios, I'm getting a little tired of scenes where pretty young females fell the men who are trying to kill them, having more than ample time to finish them off... and then choosing to leg it instead, so the chase may resume. DO YOU WANNA LIVE OR NOT?

It ain't a film for the discerning. If it's playing at 2 am on some obscure cable channel though... why not? 5/10

"Stealing Candy" is another modest budget crime thriller with a twist at the end. These twists are becoming so obligatory that it is about time one of these movies tried the unexpected and did not include a twist. That would truly be a shocking ending.

Whatever budget they had for this did not translate into anything interesting from a production design perspective. A group of friends could have shot this one weekend at their homes. Technically it is a solid production although very little is attempted. The gun play looks realistic enough.

Despite having talents as enormous as Pamela Anderson's, Jenya Lano is actually a very good actress. Her scenes in "Stealing Candy" are entertaining. Lano is my all time favorite "Xena" bad girl and now has a fairly regular part on "Charmed". Unfortunately she is only on screen for about a third of the movie. Daniel Baldwin, Coolio, and Alex McArthur seem very awkward with each other.

Don't rush out to buy or rent this but it's an OK diversion.

This film is a porno. Dress it up however you like, it will always be a porno. But its a porno with a sniff of a plot, and while it's about as far fetched as you can get, its still a fair effort. A trio of crooks need money, and to do this they decide to kidnap a Hollywood actress. She doesn't normally do sex scenes, so they film her doing one of them and post it on the internet as pay per view.

Daniel Baldwin and Coolio excepted, the acting is frankly laughable. Jenya Lano and the other guy whose name I can't remember are poor to say the least. It's the two guys I mentioned before that turn this movie from "Oh God No" to "Meh, it's OK I guess". Just about worth a rent, so give it a shot if you must. If you're a porno person, this might actually be the jump you need to start watching real movies.

Stealing Candy certainly isn't a "perfect" film, but for what it is, it's not at all bad--it kept me more than entertained, it was both sexy and thrilling, filled with tension, and the twists were done well.

The most obvious flaws are technical, but this is clearly a low budget film. Either the original film or the DVD transfer is "low definition" rather than high, and too many times it's obvious that the cinematography goes a bit out of focus. It has almost a home video texture--for a moment, I was afraid that this was going to be a no-budget stinker.

But the script is good, the performances are fun (if a bit campy, but I like that), and Mark Lester is a capable director. It helps that Jenya Lano is incredibly sexy in this, but the thrust of Stealing Candy is a crime-thriller film with a twist--in ways reminiscent of the superior Suicide Kings (1997), but without the black comedy.

That might seem to suggest that Stealing Candy is derivative, and that wouldn't be wrong--aside from Suicide Kings, it has similarities to many other films, including another excellent heist-gone-wrong flick, Killing Zoe (1994). Most oddly on this end is that scorer Dana Kaproff must have been commanded by Lester to, "Write something that sounds like Bernard Herrmann here", and you could swear that the result doesn't just sound Herrmannian, but that it was actually lifted from a Hitchcock film. That's one of many things that telegraphs some twists to come, but Lester pretty skillfully "misdirects" us from expecting particular twists, too.

At any rate, if you're someone who subtracts major points for derivativeness and lack of technical polish, approach Stealing Candy with caution, but if you're like me--you do not demand that films belong to the cult of originality and you enjoy a bit of cheese in your thrillers (we even get the cheesiest Baldwin brother here, Daniel--I'm a big fan of the Baldwin brothers' work), then this is worth a watch.