I Want Candy

This is a great British comedy about a couple of film students (Joe and Baggy) who try and get their script "The Love Storm". After going to a few production companies they arrive at an adult film company run by Doug (Eddie Marsan). Joe decides to make the movie into an erotic movie and tries to hire the biggest name in porn - Candy Fiveways (played by Carmen Electra).

Surprisingly there is no nudity in this film but there are quite a few funny scenes. One involves an actor and lets just say thank god for wet wipes. Another involves an Asian babe and ping pong balls. Jimmy Carr and Mackenzie Crook provide some decent scenes between them too.

This is a real British feel good comedy and provides all that is needed for this type of film. I give it 8/10.

Two film students head to London with their script which they believe will be the first step to Hollywood, they hook up with a dodgy film producer who agrees to finance the film, provided they can get porns hottest star Candy Fiveways (Carmen Electra).

I Want Candy' it must be said is quite a sweet and charming film in a 'The Full Monty' kind of way, sadly though unlike that film, the laughs are few and far between it must be said, I think I went a full hour before a proper laugh, a very amusing scene that all I shall say "required wet wipes"! The only selling point this film would seem to have is the chance for men to see Carmen Elektra in various sexy outfits and states of undress, something I'm sure you could see say in a Playboy DVD, if she has one that is, not that'd I'd know about that sort of thing! Lightweight fluff all in all with a serious lack of laughs I'm afraid.

5/10

For every great film there must, somewhere, also be a turkey. For every Citizen Kane, we also get Little Man. And so it seems is the case for British comedies. Shortly after the fabulous Hot Fuzz, surely the best British comedy since Life of Brian, we get the dreary, predictable and not very funny I Want Candy. The film follows two film students who, desperately trying to make their first great movie, decide to make a porn film with the help of some fellow students. They manage to persuade an American female porn star, who just happens to be visiting the UK at the time, to take the lead in their film, which in turn helps them persuade a dodgy porn producer to finance their project. And that's about as deep as the film goes. Tom Riley and Tom Burke play the two students and are supported by Carmen Electra as the porn queen and Michelle Ryan as the film's production manager (romantic sub-plot). All of them give OK performances despite a script full of bad innuendos, boring sight gags, and wafer thin plot. The film is not supposed to be a cinematic work of art, clearly, but bad writing that has more than a hint of influence from those god awful 'Confessions of...' films of the 1970's makes this a cinematic experience to forget.

I Want Candy is the story of two aspiring film-students who find themselves making a porn film in Leatherhead.

Looking at the poster for the film, I was expecting this to be a dumb British version of the all-too familiar teen comedies that pollute our screens every summer (American Pie, Dude Where's My Car?, Not Another Teen Movie, etc.). How wrong I was. It's not the greatest film ever made, but it doesn't try to be.

Surprisingly, there's no nudity in the film whatsoever and the references to sex and porn are handled with a modicum of taste - again, not what you would expect.

Eddie Marsan (Gangster No.1, Vera Drake, The Illusionist) is excellent, as usual, as the sleazy film producer whilst Mackenzie Crook blesses us with his presence as a lecturer who desperately seeks kudos from the students.

My two criticisms of the film would have to be the typical Hollywood ending (which, like Carmen Electra, didn't really suit the sleepy Leatherhead suburb location) and the poor characterisation of Baggy (one of the two male leads).

I would probably recommend this film to friends - if only for the very funny bathroom scene.

Released between 300 and Mr.Bean's Holiday, this British production never really had a chance at the Box-Office despite a clever plot, amusing trailer and presence of sex siren Carmen Electra. The film didn't score to well with critics either, comments such as "It's a dire sex comedy" and "a crude, leering poorly timed farce" where pretty much commen place. Still is the film bad enough to warrant a battering on all fronts (no pun intended)? The answer is no. The plot is a clever enough little idea, two geeky film students in attempting to sell a film pitch end up agreeing to make a porn flick for the wrong people. They are offered the service of Candy Fiveways (Carmen Electra) the worlds most famous adult film star, but even with this supposed blessing, they still have to defeat the obstacles that include suspicious parents, a lack of cash and their general inexperience behind the camera. I want Candy is still waiting on a US release and so marks one of few films we get first. The film is heavily flawed but there's a charm that carry's this picture and despite being a movie with more sex toys, lesbian love scenes and innuendos than you can count it's really quite good natured. The young cast are pretty solid and whilst I don't expect to see either Tom Burke or Tom Riley become the next Hugh Grant, both might just manage in this business. Both convey a sense of excitement and dread concerning their problem, but overall the balance really feels quite nice and realistic. More often than not we are encouraged to laugh at the pratfalls Tom and err...Tom find themselves drawn into. That grows harder as the picture goes on, indeed the audience felt a lot of sympathey for the two lads on more than one occasion, and that can get in the way of belly laughter. Electra doesn't really have any acting chops to stretch but the former Baywatch babe is a likable candy, a women who despite her career and physical attributes is intelligent and something of a film buff. In many ways Electra grounds the picture and offers as many good jokes as anybody else, probably around half a dozen or so. Pirates Of The Caribbean star MacKenzie Crook offers up a few decent chuckles as the boys teacher, and Jimmy Carr manages a neat cameo as a dodgy video store clerk. The script is a bit hit and miss particularly during the middle section of the movie, I found myself laughing more at the beginning and end. That's not so say the script isn't inspired in sections, I really was caught off guard by several of the gags but to many jokes where predictable and a fair bit of the material feels recycled. Director Stephen Surjik who directed the second and vastly weaker Wayne's Worlds should be pleased enough with the final outcome, it matches anything else on his CV in terms of quality. The production looks pretty cheap and I expect the explanation for this is also the simplest. The film can't have been made on a mega budget, indeed with US release still uncertain it's fair to say the amount of money pumped in could well be miniscule. The cinematography is weak and the film looks made for T.V, which will always distract no matter how sharp a script the film boasts. The film is bound to have a lot of people recoiling in their seats as the cringe inducing scenarios pile up. Having to listen to your mum and dad having sex whilst your locked in their en suite may be bad, but thats only a fraction of the embarrassment the boys have to suffer. Last year I watched a movie called The Moguls which starred Jeff Bridges and had a similar plot to this project. I Want Candy emerges as far the better flick, and so anybody who got a kick out the first film will almost certainly enjoy this one.