Bar Girls

Terrible terrible terrible film.

The acting was atrocious.

The storyline was weak. The subplots were just plain...bad.

The lovescenes were boring.

The characters were unbelievable.

The sets were unrealistic and ugly.

The music was horrible.

The inter spliced "comic" was possibly the most interesting part.

Good film to watch if you want to die of boredom.

Any film starring a cowboy hat wearing lesbian police officer with the hairdo of a weather presenter in cowboy boots playing basketball called JR should be used as an alternative to corporal punishment.

I think this is possibly the worst film that I have ever seen.

Director Marita Giovanni's film is based on a play by Lauran Hoffman. Hoffman's material may get tied up in psychobabble but she has an ear for entertaining dialogue and mercilessly avoids the archness usually associated with lesbian drama. Set around an LA Girl bar it focuses on Loretta (Nancy Allison Wolfe), a beautiful red-haired cartoonist, and her romance with actress Rachel (Liza D'Agostino).

Wolfe's performance is droll and moving, and she manages to throw off the bad ideas Giovanni and Hoffman aim at her. She also deliberately approximates the glamour of Rita Hayworth from Gilda. Her apartment features the famous poster of Hayworth smoking, as well as a huge closeup of Lotte Lenya's eyes. The character of Rachel is less interesting though D'Agostino holds her own with Wolfe in their fight scenes. I also like Loretta's ditzy friend Veronica (Justine Slater), a straight woman `enchanted' by the idea of a lesbian affair. Those wanting to see a graphic sex scene will not be disappointed but it felt to me Giovanni cut away at a climactic (no pun intended) moment.

The awful soundtrack suggests the film's low budget, as does the underpopulated bar, though this underpopulation serves Hoffman's incestuous roundelay theme. Note a cameo by Chastity Bono at Scorpio night.

It was a wonderful movie. Although it wasn't on a billion dollar budget, the characters were wonderful and the plot was fairly believable. One woman, Loretta, frequents a gay bar in search for a love she's never had. She meets Rachel. Neither Loretta nor Rachel are single but they are determined to make it work. There is a sort of love-circle between the women that frequent the bar and Loretta struggles to keep a hold on the one person who is there for her. It had a feel similar to the movie "The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love" (another beautifully crafted movie). I'd recommend them both.

This was an amateurish film. It had the feel of a home movie. The characters were badly acted and as poorly crafted. As a man (I never thought I would feel so weird writing those words) it seemed completely unbelievable. What exactly were we, the audience, meant to think? Were we supposed to sympathise with the characters? I can't even remember their names. It deserves its very bad rating. a feeble movie, with dreadful acting and a dire script.

I was hoping for a few laughs when I got into the movie. What I found was something was more like a documentary (a day in the life of....). Having coached women's athletics for many years, I've seen a lot of the lesbian lifestyle and this movie came closer to portraying my view of a lesbian's life than any other that I've seen.

Low budget? Yes. Absolutely. And the "bar" is embarrassing to the rest of the movie. Upgrade it just a bit and the movie gets quite a bit better. And the copette toward the end of the movie is a bit too stereotypical. Both in appearance and behavior.

A very entertaining, but not a particularly funny comedy.

Wolfe, however, is now high on my list of people that I'd like to meet.