Virtual Sexuality

The criticisms thrown at this British film have all missed the point - the filmmakers were trying to create a campy teen sex comedy in the banal and exploitative tradition of American 1980s cinema, but reverse the gender roles so that the girls are the protagonists and the boys do all of the nudity. It's no surprise that it took U.K. filmmakers to achieve this role reversal, largely because U.K. and other Euro films have never shied away from full male nudity, much unlike American filmmakers.

On this angle, the filmmakers have been absolutely successful. I attended a viewing of this last week in Toronto, and noted the hetero couple sitting in front of me - at the end of the film, the girl seemed slightly amused and aroused, while the boy seemed put out a bit - his facial expression seemed to resemble that of your average straight teenage girl after viewing Porky's or something like that. He seemed annoyed, and frustrated that all the nudity (and there was a lot of it for mainstream film standards) in the film was male.

Pathetic plot points aside, or bad acting, etc. this film achieves what it wanted to achieve - exploit the male gender in the context of a banal teen sex comedy featuring female protagonists. They weren't going for a logical plot or characters who would intrigue the audience. Who ever cared about the plots of the 1980s American teen sex comedies, anyway?

The filmmakers achieved their primary purpose with the teenage boy locker room scene, featuring several furtive shots of full frontal nudity. Not to mention, the numerous butt shots of star Rupert Penry-Jones, the dream boat created by the film's virtual reality machine, throughout the entire film.

A British teen movies which centres around a girl (Justine) accidentally creating her dream man (Jake) in by the use of a virtual reality machine, there is only one problem (well….not just one…) she gets trapped inside his body with a geek as the only person who knows the truth and the only person she can trust. It sounds a lot worse than it is, I found it more watchable for the reason that Laura Fraser was starring in it more than the film content, indeed she looks stunning throughout especially when she dresses in a red lycra dress in order to impress Jake, WOW!!, If only I had a virtual reality machine

Justine (Laura Fraser) is a Londoner teenager, frustrated for not having a boy friend and for not having had sex yet. Her best friend and advisor is Fran (Marcelle Duprey), and she is decided to have her first sexual experience with the athlete Alex (Kieran O'Brien), who is disputed by many girls. When Justine goes to a Fair of Technology with her nerd friend Chas (Luke De Lacey), she uses a virtual machine and creates her perfect man. However, due to an accident with a great explosion, the virtual man becomes real. He self-calls Jake (Rupert Penry-Jones), becomes a close friend of Chas and is a good athlete and successful with the girls. The predictable conclusion of the story offers no surprises. "Virtual Sexuality" is a silly, but also funny romantic comedy. The actresses are very beautiful, the soundtrack is excellent and in the end, this movie is a good entertainment. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sexualidade Virtual" ("Virtual Sexuality")

While the premise of this film has been done, it starts out with enough freshness and humor to keep you watching. Justine's early escapades inside the body of her own "perfect man" are quite humorous and Rupert Penry-Jones as Jake does a great job portraying a man, with the "personality" of a teenage girl, Justine. But past the halfway mark this film loses complete direction. We grow to really like the endearing Jake, but we discover that Justine is also a separate entity to him, (i.e. the machine made a double of Justine as a man, so there are two of them, one male, one female). And then the film follows Justine in her efforts to snag Jake, (as she doesn't know he is really her). The movie tries to make her the central character again, and fails because we really don't care anymore -- she's hardly as interesting. It also takes a detour at the moment when some intriguing and more controversial issues are about to be raised. Jake is being seduced by a girl at school that everyone calls, "hoover",(take a guess why), and after she spends sometime kissing him on the street, we never see her again. It raises an interesting question of sexual preference, i.e. justine inside a man's body being attracted to a woman, but the movie skirts the issue, wanting instead to regress into a high school soap opera. At the close of the film Jake is deleted in a quick wrap-up effort to make this a movie about loving yourself and waiting to lose your virginity to a "nice guy," who may not have the looks, but has the personality. Its hokey sub-plot about the scientists trying to recapture Jake to perform scientific experiments on him only hinders the movie even more, making certain scenes into a slapstick comedy. Its unfortunate that something could start out interesting enough and plummet so quickly. But the first half-an-hour is worth watching, if for nothing else than Rupert Penry-Jones (Jake)as he "explores" his new masculine body.

Virtual Sexuality proves that Britain can produce romantic comedies as vapid as those from America. The only differences are an ending that ties up the loose bits differently than an American film would and a cameo by Ram John Holder, which is always welcome. That's enough to make this a watcher on a cold winter's night.