Hot Moves

Despite the obviously hackneyed (but still universal) plot about a bunch of loser teen age boys trying to get laid, this movie really works! (mostly because of the quality and quantity of the gorgeous and cute girls/ women in this film)

The producer rarely went for obvious beauty and managed to find some real gems that are still a turn on today -- I am starting to appreciate the results of high-impact aerobics on the female form in the eighties more and more.

Where else, outside of a nudie cutie film will you find a flock of completely naked girls doing a beach run ala "Chariots of Fire".

After seeing this film, any red blooded teenage boy will certainly want to re double his efforts to get laid--if he can ever find girls this cute!

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.

"Hot Moves" wasn't exactly a big grosser when it was released to theaters, a big reason probably being that the teenage sex comedy genre was all but dead at that time. But I think a bigger reason why the movie never took off was because it's an AWFUL movie. For starters, there's no real plot on display here - it's pretty much just a collection of vignettes with the loosest of threads holding them together. And while the movie attempts to be comic with just about every vignette, the results are absolutely without any laughs. When it comes to sex and nudity, there is less of that here than you might think - I think there are only three scenes where nudity is on display (though the second scene is jam-packed with naked women.) The cast shows some talent, but the way they are directed makes them come across as alike, without any individualism. There's nothing in this movie that may make it worth a rental to anyone.

'Hot Moves' is one of the *many* "teen sex comedies" from the 80s. A few you may remember--'Porky's', 'Spring Break'--a couple you might know if you had Cinemax growing up. Most are on the level of 'Hot Moves'. This was a thrift store, VHS(!), find. I love this genre, and had never seen or heard of it before, so I faced the accusing glare of the cashier and gladly plunked down my .99 for what appeared to be an original video store rental copy.

It gets off to a bit of a clunky start, but once it gets rolling it's pretty fun. The plot is actually very similar to 'American Pie', and the four leads--who all look like actual high schoolers instead of the customary 80s teen who is played by a 35 year old--are all pretty charming and have good chemistry together. Save for the copious nudity, and there's a bunch (at one point there's a scene on a nude beach where a large group of women recreate the iconic scene from 'Chariots of Fire') it's all harmless fun. Not a movie for a Women's Studies major or anyone with an allergy to the 80s, but a decent time if you like the genre.

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.