Hot Moves

The year was 2006. I had some spare time one night, so I decided to go to a local video store to pick up a movie, and this particular store just so happened to still carry titles on VHS. Being a fan of 80s comedies (specifically "sex comedies"), I was immediately drawn to a tape called "Hot Moves". The cover art and synopsis on the back cover had me very curious, so I went for it (along with the classics "Revenge of the Nerds II - Nerds in Paradise" and "National Lampoon's Class Reunion").

I didn't have my hopes too high, but when I got home and popped the tape into the VCR, it definitely exceeded my hopes! First of all, how can anyone not like a movie where the theme song is by British heavy metal band Raven?? Now, it's not the best sex comedy out there in terms of production quality, but it certainly has memorable moments and enjoyable characters. The plot is simple: four high school friends from Venice Beach make a pact to "get laid" before the end of the summer. That's it, plain and simple. But the measures they go through to achieve this goal definitely has some hilarious outcomes. The four leading men are:

Michael (Adam Silbar), the "main" character. Michael is the somewhat smooth-talking leader of the group, and is actually a bit of a jerk to his girlfriend Julie Ann (Jill Schoelen, "Babes in Toyland", "The Stepfather"), because she isn't ready to go "all the way". Enter a sexy acquaintance (Debi Richter), and there is trouble in paradise!

Barry (Michael Zorek, "Private School", "Teen Wolf Too") is the, um, "heaviest" of the bunch, and steals every scene he's in! The funniest scenes definitely revolve around him. He even chugs a bottle of ketchup like it's nobody's business!

Joey (Jeff Fishman) is the short, skinny, shy, most awkward (and probably most desperate) member of the gang. His most memorable scene involves the boys taking him downtown to get a prostitute. Hilarity ensues.

Scotty (Johnny Timko) is the blond member of the group, and is (in my opinion) the dullest and least memorable character here. He has a funny scene involving a paper route, but he's pretty forgettable in every other scene he's in.

What I disliked the most about this movie is all that filler. So many pointless scenes of people on Venice Beach skateboarding, body-building, break-dancing, there's even a mime at one point! These scenes were obviously thrown in as an attempt to stretch out its short running time. Even with all these scenes, the movie runs under 90 minutes.

Another complaint I have is the music. Other than the theme song by Raven, the music in here is absolutely awful! I understand that this is a low-budget comedy, and that most of the music was made especially for the film, but I still think they could have made better music for the movie.

That being said, those things aren't enough to ruin the movie, at least not for me. A big saving grace here is the great chemistry between the four main actors. It actually feels like they're old friends, and those scenes of them sitting at their table at the bowling alley are among some of the best scenes in the movie. Long story short, this is an enjoyable sex-comedy from the 80s, and is better than any sequel that "Porky's" ever squeezed out.

A review by Jex Russell

I dont care what anyone says the movies in the 80s r by far the best. Lets see ware do u think the people who wrote AMERICAN PIE got there idea mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? This movie yes could of been a lil better put together but u cant even compare movies now days with older ones cause the technology diference is unfair.

Forged within the sea of endless '80s teen sex comedies, Hot Moves somehow manages to be much greater than the sum of it parts.

This movie saw almost no time in the theaters, showing up only in a few New York locations in December '85, hoping to lure in cold easterners yearning to do some California dreaming.

Hot Moves certainly has its share of faults. The acting ranges from mediocre to horrible, a lot of the dialog is poorly written, and the movie is peppered with long, "second-unit" scenes on Venice Beach which don't feature any of the cast, and have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. These parts were obviously "filler", as the running time for the entire movie is 85 minutes. Without these boring sequences, the movie would be well under 80, which wouldn't qualify it as "feature length".

However, despite its aforementioned problems. "Hot Moves" manages to be charming, entertaining, and at times, very funny. Despite the movie's obvious low budget, it still features a completely original 12-song-deep soundtrack, and a lot of the music also has its own campy charm.

Hot Moves is perhaps best known for its "nude beach" scene, where the viewer is treated to the full frontal nudity of dozens of beautiful women, inexplicably running across the sand. Such a display would surely earn an NC-17 rating nowadays, but somehow this movie kept its "R" rating back in 1985.

While I can't complain about the nude women, "Hot Moves" actually stands out in my mind for its frivolous fun and surprisingly creative plot. I have a strong feeling that the writers of "American Pie" must have seen Hot Moves, since the plots are incredibly similar. While American Pie was more "advanced" than Hot Moves, it could be argued that the raw material for Hot Moves was actually better. Oddly enough, when the E! channel toured Seann "Stifler" William Scott's house, he proudly displayed Hot Moves as one of his favorite movie of all times.

Look for Virgil Frye (Soleil Moon Frye's dad) playing a sex shop owner, in an odd cameo.

Rent Hot Moves. It's 85 minutes of fun.

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.

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.