The Misadventures of James Spawn

I had real high hopes for this one. I remember when they had the short-lived Interactive Movies at the theatres like "Mr. Payback" and "Ride For Your Life," which were mindless, guilty fun and would be more of a blast to play on a home systems. I was so excited hearing that Interactive Movies would be making appearances on the DVD Player, which is a pretty good idea. "I'm Your Man," the first release, was a letdown, but it wasn't a huge loss since I rented it for free and at least a bit of the interaction was fun. When I had heard about "Misadventures of James Spawn," and read comments from customers on DVD EMPIRE saying it was "one of the neatest things ever," "a blast for everyone," and "better than Austin Powers", I rushed up to Suncoast after reading the comments and spent 30 bucks on the thing. It seems like it'd be a lot of fun and the idea is nifty; take an arab stereotype and try to get him hooked up with the perfect girl as you go from girl to girl, but the execution is terrible. The people I played it with were bored to death and we gave up with it after 10 minutes. I later ended up playing it by myself and grew tired of it very fast. The creators of the game throw in plenty of stupid sight gags and toilet humor that would only make a 5 year old chuckle. James Spawn is a very annoying character and after ten seconds, I wanted to just choke him. I've seen better acting in porn films, the interaction is very boring, and there's no redeeming values whatsoever. It just sits around in my room collecting dust to this day. I really enjoy the concepts of interactive films and hope they keep coming out with them and hopefully, can make them much better. For now, steer clear of this of this one, its one of the biggest wastes of time and money.

This thing isn't a movie, it's a video game implemented in the DVD player's menu system. The player makes a series of 4-way choices. Almost all of them lead to a clip of the hero being threatened or insulted, and then back to the beginning of the maze. The persistent player will eventually find paths to four PG-rated scenes where the hero makes out, if you can call it that, with one of the four models.

Each menu choice results in a clip of what is supposed to be a slapstick humorous situation with the hero. The clip ends with either the return to the beginning, or another four-way choice. The return and the four-way choices take several seconds to cycle through the DVD player, and the result is very tedious game play. The production values are poor, shot with a hand held camcorder.

The film clips include a few seconds of the always beautiful and seductive Lorissa McComas doing her trademark "I'm horny" character but no nudity or sex. Rebecca Ferratti looks better than she did in _Hard Vice_ but that's not saying much. Jenna Bodnar isn't particularly attractive, and Tatiana Tiele never gets to show off.

This production appears to be a film school or multimedia class project. It is a total waste of time, do not rent it. Ms. MCComas and Ferratti would do well to omit it from their C.V.s and their fans will be very disappointed.