Zandalee

In New Orleans, Zandalee (Erika Anderson) is married to poet-at-heart Thierry Martin (Judge Reinhold). He's struggling to keep afloat his father's business. Their marriage is in trouble. Childhood friend Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage) comes back into his life after a bachelor party. Zandalee starts an affair with the wild painter Johnny.

This is a lifeless movie. The stone-faced Erika Anderson lacks any kind of acting charisma. She was probably much better as a model. Her main contribution to the movie is nudity. Director Sam Pillsbury tries to inject nudity to spice up this tired melodrama. It doesn't work. The dialog is clunky as heck. The pace is as slow as molasses. This is sexploitation B-movie with a lot of great actors and Erika.

Zandalee is the kind of movie that a teenage boy would watch late at night on HBO...only after locking his bedroom door. New Orleans is very pretty, and there's some decent sex scenes, but other than that there's nothing more here that hasn't been done better somewhere else. It is what it is.

Nicholas Cage is mis-cast as an irrestistable sex-god/brooding artist who comes to stay with an old friend (Judge Reinhold) and proceeds to VERY unsubtley seduce his wife, Zandalee (Twin Peaks' Erika Anderson). Despite his lank, greasy (thinning) hair, scraggy goaty, boorish manner and an unfortunate fondness for spouting pretentious philosophy, rather than find him hilarious she is inexplicably drawn to him.

The only thing that keeps the interest from flagging throughout this film are the strong sex scenes and the gratuitous nudity involving the stunning Anderson, which begins, promisingly enough, before the opening credits have even finished and is sprinkled generously throughout the film. On the downside, you also have to see Judge Reinhold's butt - not such a pretty sight - but sometimes sacrifices have to be made.

"Not the best . . .but . . . Reviewer: A viewer from edison, nj USA For those of us who cherish the steamy city of New Orleans, Zandalee captures the steaminess while transcending its shortcomings.

Rehinhold could have made more of an effort to exhibit a more tragic figure - and could have made an attempt at maintaining ANY accent. Cage is satan personified. More than a bit melodramatic in many scenes, good cameo appearances by Marissa Tomei, Joe Pantoliano (pricesless cross-dresser!) and Steve Buscemi (playing Steve Buscemi) add to the memorable scenes and memorable/quotable dialogue: ("I'm your reality check" "Its a heartifact" "A little decorum!".

Its worth the 3 bucks to rent of the $15 to buy it. Nice steamy, sexy movie. Not the greatest . . . but . . .

This is a great-looking film, filmed in rich colors and beautiful New Orleans locations. But dramatically it doesn't fare so well; it's mostly a monotonous series of heavy-breathing sequences, interrupted by dialogue passages that seem to exist only because a film can't be made ONLY with sex scenes. We also get lots of gratuitous nudity from the statuesque Erika Anderson, who's married to Judge Reinhold (fairly good, but not good enough to be taken absolutely seriously as a dramatic actor yet) and pursued by Nicolas Cage (in a smug performance he would probably like to forget today). Overall, not a horrible film, but not outstanding, either. (**)