During her directorial career at VCA Pictures, Veronica Hart piloted several comebacks (notably those of Ginger Lynn and Marilyn Chambers), and her Sunset Thomas effort falls flat. It's well-intentioned, but the George Kaplan script is not one of his best, and the feature fails to live up to its promise of Americana.
Set at a diner owned by Don Hollywood with short-order cook Ron Jeremy in charge, all the Southern-fried accents affected by the cast got my hopes up that this would turn out to be representative of one of my favorite porn genres, the rural America/heartland films. But instead Hart spins a cornball Cinderella story that is never convincing, as the cast is supposed to play 3-dimensional characters that turn out to be mere vessels for humping.
Evan Stone is the Prince Charming of the piece, saddled with insufferably haughty girlfriend Olivia O'Lovely. I liked seeing her do some acting after watching her so often in gonzo videos, but her role is mere horny bitch, nothing to underline on her resume.
Film opens without any preamble, just a very lengthy 3-way scene of star Sunset with Chris Cannon and anal-oriented Flick Shagwell. It turns out to be merely Trixie's fantasy as she masturbates with a dildo on a toilet seat.
Best acting comes from Brooke Hunter, almost empathetic as a fellow waitress, who earns two hot sex scenes, one with Don Hollywood, her real-life husband. That one is played bareback, as is a later Olivia scene with Mr. Marcus as part of an outdoor 3-way, but condoms are also used. Thankfully, Jeremy is a non-sex performer here, adding nothing to the show with his 1-note irascible meanie.
The Polyanna approach Kaplan and Hart take toward the story is self- defeating, as none of the rags to riches nonsense plays believably. Finale of our heroine given a brand-new convertible and a ton of cash to start her new life of self-realization, after suffering through some treacly philosophizing by an overly earnest Stone, is awful. At least she got a goodbye kiss from lesbian chauffeur Christi Lake, that tall breath of fresh air in porn here sporting a deep tan and red hair.
Claudia Jennings in the soft-core drive-in movie "Truckstop Women" is far better, and would have provided a useful starting point for Kaplan when he was concocting his script.
