Stealing Candy

"Stealing Candy" is another modest budget crime thriller with a twist at the end. These twists are becoming so obligatory that it is about time one of these movies tried the unexpected and did not include a twist. That would truly be a shocking ending.

Whatever budget they had for this did not translate into anything interesting from a production design perspective. A group of friends could have shot this one weekend at their homes. Technically it is a solid production although very little is attempted. The gun play looks realistic enough.

Despite having talents as enormous as Pamela Anderson's, Jenya Lano is actually a very good actress. Her scenes in "Stealing Candy" are entertaining. Lano is my all time favorite "Xena" bad girl and now has a fairly regular part on "Charmed". Unfortunately she is only on screen for about a third of the movie. Daniel Baldwin, Coolio, and Alex McArthur seem very awkward with each other.

Don't rush out to buy or rent this but it's an OK diversion.

This film is a porno. Dress it up however you like, it will always be a porno. But its a porno with a sniff of a plot, and while it's about as far fetched as you can get, its still a fair effort. A trio of crooks need money, and to do this they decide to kidnap a Hollywood actress. She doesn't normally do sex scenes, so they film her doing one of them and post it on the internet as pay per view.

Daniel Baldwin and Coolio excepted, the acting is frankly laughable. Jenya Lano and the other guy whose name I can't remember are poor to say the least. It's the two guys I mentioned before that turn this movie from "Oh God No" to "Meh, it's OK I guess". Just about worth a rent, so give it a shot if you must. If you're a porno person, this might actually be the jump you need to start watching real movies.

This wasn't a good movie, it wasn't a bad movie either. Definitely a rental. The concept of the movie was decent and I think it had a lot of potential. A couple of plot twists and a good looking girl like Jenya made it watchable. This could have been a great movie if it had a bigger budget and better stars.

The premise of the movie is that three ex-cons kidnap a movie actress who has a "no nudity" clause in her contract, and persuade her to perform for the internet for some quick cash to be made for all three, only, you guessed it, something goes wrong.

The award for best actor in the movie goes to Daniel Baldwin (purely coincidental, but I've seen a lot of his movies recently). He's the only character that had any depth put into it.

I liked Jenya Lano and would like to see if she has some more range as an actress. She has appeared in S.W.A.T. and Blade but nothing else I have heard of. Hopefully, she'll put out some more meaningful movies in the future... And while I'm at it, I gotta say I love that name Jenya.

Alex McArthur played the mastermind and did a mediocre job. No complaints, no compliments, just OK. It might have been fun to see Kelsey Grammer in this role in sort of a Sideshow Bob kind of way. It could have made it more interesting.

Coolio, on the other hand, should get a Razzie. As far as rapper-actors go, he's on the bottom of that list, and the list itself is pretty much a bad list to be on anyways. Let's just say he's no LL Cool J. More than once he reminded me of a very unfunny Marlon Wayans and tried too hard to be the scary villain. He didn't succeed. Samuel L. Jackson seems a natural to play this part. Stick with what works. If anything, Coolio should have watched a Samuel L. Jackson movie to prepare. Typical rapper, they're all actors anyways but not many have any range past playing a thug. Enough said on that I suppose.

Overall, the movie was another one in the middle of the road. I gave it a 6 out of 10 because I liked the idea of the movie and a few decent scenes but nothing more. Try to catch it on cable somewhere if possible.

A movie I found on Tubi with Daniel Baldwin (The "Wish" Baldwin brother), Coolio (yes, that guy from "Gangsters Paradise" and a blonde actress with great tits that I've never seen before and I'll probably never see again.

The story is quite sleazy. Three blokes kidnap an actress who refuses to do sex scenes. They organise an online web cam service to take money from people wanting to see this actress have sex on cam....lol.

It is actually a better movie than it ever has a right to be. While the acting is what you'd expect from a movie, the actual star of the movie is.....believe it or not, the story. I actually enjoyed it. The production values stop it from being a higher than a 5 but a 5 is definitely fine for this.

Stealing Candy certainly isn't a "perfect" film, but for what it is, it's not at all bad--it kept me more than entertained, it was both sexy and thrilling, filled with tension, and the twists were done well.

The most obvious flaws are technical, but this is clearly a low budget film. Either the original film or the DVD transfer is "low definition" rather than high, and too many times it's obvious that the cinematography goes a bit out of focus. It has almost a home video texture--for a moment, I was afraid that this was going to be a no-budget stinker.

But the script is good, the performances are fun (if a bit campy, but I like that), and Mark Lester is a capable director. It helps that Jenya Lano is incredibly sexy in this, but the thrust of Stealing Candy is a crime-thriller film with a twist--in ways reminiscent of the superior Suicide Kings (1997), but without the black comedy.

That might seem to suggest that Stealing Candy is derivative, and that wouldn't be wrong--aside from Suicide Kings, it has similarities to many other films, including another excellent heist-gone-wrong flick, Killing Zoe (1994). Most oddly on this end is that scorer Dana Kaproff must have been commanded by Lester to, "Write something that sounds like Bernard Herrmann here", and you could swear that the result doesn't just sound Herrmannian, but that it was actually lifted from a Hitchcock film. That's one of many things that telegraphs some twists to come, but Lester pretty skillfully "misdirects" us from expecting particular twists, too.

At any rate, if you're someone who subtracts major points for derivativeness and lack of technical polish, approach Stealing Candy with caution, but if you're like me--you do not demand that films belong to the cult of originality and you enjoy a bit of cheese in your thrillers (we even get the cheesiest Baldwin brother here, Daniel--I'm a big fan of the Baldwin brothers' work), then this is worth a watch.