Thai Me Up

Hats off to them, they really go for it in this hardcore comedy about a detective trying to track down a heiress with criminal ties. I'm not the biggest Jonathan Morgan fan, but he does a great job doing his best Jim Carrey "Ace Ventura" impression and he manages to carry the film. That said, the joke wears thin after a bit. It's the '90s and as you can tell by the title, they go hard on the Asian aspect. Sometimes in a fun way by having the whole thing poorly dubbed, in not so good ways like in many of Morgan's stereotype disguises and hitting some phobia jokes. So while ambitious and overall pretty fun for the era, it goes on a bit too long and becomes a patience tester.

This porn comedy showed me why a very successful Adult comedy filmmaker, Jace Rocker, fairly quickly faded from the spotlight. His best work, including "Arabian Nights", "Haunted Nights" from the early '90s was followed up by less funny efforts like this one and the likes of "Dead Men Don't Wear Rubbers".

With star Jonathan Morgan doing his specialty of '40s Hollywood comedy plus dated/racist Jerry Lewis material (Asian stereotypes), what we have is clearly inspired (or in porn terms, a ripoff) by Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?", that auteur's debut as filmmaker. Superstar Asia Carrera is terrifically sexy as usual, and Morgan recycles his store of Rocker-penned one-liners.

Gimmick of dubbing the show intentionally out-of-sync with English dialogue is a gag that doesn't work at all -Woody authentically took an existing Japanese crime movie and comically mutilated/added to it, while Jace starts from scratch -simply not funny.

Fans need to seek out his best material -now out-of-print Wicked Pictures hits from the VHS era, including Morgan in Jace's "Western Nights" spoof. Rocker didn't learn his lesson: his final effort (in 2010) was a poor satire combining Asian stereotyping and imitating "Flesh Gordon", titled "Supertail and the Evil Wang".