Getting It On

How can someone make a 90 minute feature and still end up with absolutely nothing? The answer lies within the confines of the tape of this (thankfully very rare) so-called "sex comedy" which jettisoned both claims to such an extent it should be prosecuted under the False Claims act. Supposedly about a high school boy who gets state of the art video equipment (for 1983) to spy on his sexy female next door neighbour getting undressed, it actually abandons this sick but promising premise about half-way through in favour of a myriad of sub-plots about five uninteresting character's love-lives. Unfortunately this plays out as all talk and no action, so skin fans will be bored out of their skulls, and everybody else will be tearing their hair out at the amateurish acting and the extreme slow pace of the movie. So to sum up then, a film for no-one. Right, back to the video store we go.. 2/10

This was filmed in my neighborhood when I was a Freshman in High School. I was an extra in the school auditorium scene where the "sex tape" is shown, Want to know more, email me. This was originally called 'American Voyeur' when I went to the premiere where the mayor of Hickory, NC gave Olsen a key to the city, with a crowd full of people dressed to the 9's. Then, a coming-of-age flick movie came up on the screen; nice surprise for that crowd.

GETTING IT ON bills itself as a typical promiscuous sex comedy and fails miserably. It is a painfully amateur production with a cast of no-names that tend to make a viewer cringe every time they open their mouths. The cast is lead by Martin Yost, who plays Alex, a teen-age Peeping Tom who decides to turn his perverted pastime into a money-making scheme. His father blindly agrees to give his son the $4000 to start a security surveillance business, which Alex can then use as an excuse to spy on other people, presumably "in the act". The father is unbelievably naive. It would have helped if the father was more suspicious of what his son was doing with all this expensive equipment. As for the "peep" sequences, they are far and few in the film and lack imagination for what the film is trying to advertise. No new ground is broken here.

There is no drive to the film. It is dull and the actors just seem to be going through the motions. That and the director tries to use two different sequences in which an actor pulls a gun on someone else as a surprise comedic effect, which is a lousy attempt at cheap laughs. The film weighs in at about 90 minutes, and by 90 minutes it's too long! Don't bother with this one. Try PORKY'S or MISCHIEF instead.

Simple-minded sex farce aims for sly smiles. On that level, it is amiable enough. All the actors seem to be having a genial enough time. There's not much else to tell -- just silly suburban hijinks, but nothing I found particularly offensive, or particularly interesting. But it was on a local UHF station while I worked out at a hotel gym, and for that it filled the bill nicely.

Two high school video nerds use cameras to peep on classmates in their underwear. No hilarity ensues. The cast actually appears to be playing a coming of age sex comedy straight! And (almost) without the sex...

Putting aside the creepy and legally actionable invasion of privacy premise, Mr. William Olsen, if you are trying to make one of the hundred or so no budget 80s teen romps that came out in the wake of Porky's - many direct-to-VHS - start by writing a few JOKES. If your budget is so small that driving to an audio-video store in a borrowed Gremlin counts as an action scene, if the best film stock you can afford has resolution below the quality of a late night infomercial, if your cast has less experience than the theatre department of the local community college, and your cameraman has to use in situ track lighting, you can still get by as long as the viewer has something to laugh at and a few busty co-eds. That's the basic formula. But here we get little of either.

The leaden pace is a hindrance as well. TV sitcoms also lack cinematic flair and are shot on only two or three sets. But any sitcom producer knows that all that is forgivable if you can wring some laughs out of the situation and keep things moving. A little character humour, some insult comedy, a bit of bug-eyed hyperbole, a few classic set up and payoff exchanges, a squirmy situation or two... Throw us SOMETHING. A badumbump joke. A prop gag. A pratfall. Manufacture a laugh and then push things ahead to the next setup.

No sex comedy with this little gratuitous nudity should be this utterly devoid of guffaws too. This is what results from failing at your one job.