David Stanley's scripts always seem to be trying for something different, but he overreaches in "Loveless", its alternate title "Chloe Jones is Loveless" even more misleading. It's an assembly-line vehicle for contract star Jones, but Stanley turns in something entirely different.
Jones was briefly my favorite star in the early part of this millennium, after becoming addicted to her photo spreads in magazines like Playboy and Penthouse and then intrigued by her transition to hardcore porn. She made a couple of classics for Red Ezra and some interesting work for John T. Bone, but this Vivid feature misuses her.
Jones gets two sex scenes but has nothing to do with the story -she is the extraneous sex filler actress in her own movie! One supposes that is Stanley's usual subversive tactic but I was not thrilled with such thumbing one's nose at the paying customers who, some 13 years ago, were paying to see Chloe.
Instead we have the unconvincing story of Eric Masterson, a schlump of a porno movie crew member who spends his off hours at home feeling sorry for himself and watching porn. If this is true to life, perhaps reflecting David's own life, I wouldn't be too surprised, especially in one sequence where Eric is watching foot-fetish videos, reflecting auteur Stanley's oft-indulged personal fetish.
Much like Hitchcock's "Psycho", the first few reels are basic red herring content to distract and confuse the viewer (Hitch was better at it than Stanley or Woody Allen to namedrop another pretender). Opening is presented as an entirely different movie altogether, "Gotcha" starring Evan Stone as a sort of XXX-rated Ashton Kutcher, pranking on unsuspecting women in bars with his cameraman in tow, handing them stupid pick-up lines and trying to lure them into shooting porn footage with him. It's a stale old routine that I've seen a thousand times, ranging from local NYC cable schmo of decades past Ugly George to Brit Porn star Omar Williams and his Big Omar character (replete with cameraman in tow) and more famously the clowns behind both soft-core "Girls Gone Wild" and Florida's Bang Bros. crap.
The girl Evan unconvincingly picks up and humps (in threesome with his camera man) is Chloe Jones, who seems to be acting under protest, refusing to answer any of Evan's improvised inane questions. She later pops up in the film for a second humping scene, irrelevant to the film and just a contractual gimmick.
Eric watches this stupid video "Gotcha" at home and decides to emulate the great Evan. He repeats the dumb routine in a bar on Lezley Zen. His success with her leads to a very awkward film construction gimmick by Stanley, as after sex Eric throws nude Lezley out of his house, yelling "Gotcha", David cuts to a "Six Months Eariler" card, with his movie veering into an entirely new tack and serious (sort of) mood.
All sorts of lofty thematic strains are introduced into the script, most of which I found merely annoying rather than moving or insightful. Lezley's character Collie is called "Lady" and Eric's Frank is called "Fella" to give them some unearned "everyman" significance.
MAJOR SPOILER:
Amidst tons of insider stuff about porno filmmaking, climax is Lezley's off-screen death in Vegas on her (unshown) honeymoon there with unlikely college professor! Julian (maybe he majored in tattooing or penis pump demonstration). We, the poor porno viewers, are supposed to get choked up over the gimmicky death, made even more confusing by the garbled time-sequence of Stanley's script, and hailed in a nonsensical "moment of silence for Collie" on the porno set of a film within a film directed by Stanley but with a lookalike actor named "Fluid" playing the great man! I had coincidentally just watched a Nicholas Sparks stinker "The Best of Me" right before and I cannot say which is worse in the maudlin script department, though Sparks sure gives Stanley a run for his money.
What offended me is that Zen is misused here too as the leading lady not worthy of billing -merely filling in for Chloe in Chloe's movie as it were. She tries hard but her scenes are badly written and awkwardly directed. Eric, a terrifically talented farceur, is unfunny as a morose, sad-sack - thoroughly misusing his talents. Sexy Cherokee is tossed in as the "saver" -hot on the porno set making love and later ridiculously tossed in for an extraneous, badly introduced sex scene with Eric.
Jones was briefly my favorite star in the early part of this millennium, after becoming addicted to her photo spreads in magazines like Playboy and Penthouse and then intrigued by her transition to hardcore porn. She made a couple of classics for Red Ezra and some interesting work for John T. Bone, but this Vivid feature misuses her.
Jones gets two sex scenes but has nothing to do with the story -she is the extraneous sex filler actress in her own movie! One supposes that is Stanley's usual subversive tactic but I was not thrilled with such thumbing one's nose at the paying customers who, some 13 years ago, were paying to see Chloe.
Instead we have the unconvincing story of Eric Masterson, a schlump of a porno movie crew member who spends his off hours at home feeling sorry for himself and watching porn. If this is true to life, perhaps reflecting David's own life, I wouldn't be too surprised, especially in one sequence where Eric is watching foot-fetish videos, reflecting auteur Stanley's oft-indulged personal fetish.
Much like Hitchcock's "Psycho", the first few reels are basic red herring content to distract and confuse the viewer (Hitch was better at it than Stanley or Woody Allen to namedrop another pretender). Opening is presented as an entirely different movie altogether, "Gotcha" starring Evan Stone as a sort of XXX-rated Ashton Kutcher, pranking on unsuspecting women in bars with his cameraman in tow, handing them stupid pick-up lines and trying to lure them into shooting porn footage with him. It's a stale old routine that I've seen a thousand times, ranging from local NYC cable schmo of decades past Ugly George to Brit Porn star Omar Williams and his Big Omar character (replete with cameraman in tow) and more famously the clowns behind both soft-core "Girls Gone Wild" and Florida's Bang Bros. crap.
The girl Evan unconvincingly picks up and humps (in threesome with his camera man) is Chloe Jones, who seems to be acting under protest, refusing to answer any of Evan's improvised inane questions. She later pops up in the film for a second humping scene, irrelevant to the film and just a contractual gimmick.
Eric watches this stupid video "Gotcha" at home and decides to emulate the great Evan. He repeats the dumb routine in a bar on Lezley Zen. His success with her leads to a very awkward film construction gimmick by Stanley, as after sex Eric throws nude Lezley out of his house, yelling "Gotcha", David cuts to a "Six Months Eariler" card, with his movie veering into an entirely new tack and serious (sort of) mood.
All sorts of lofty thematic strains are introduced into the script, most of which I found merely annoying rather than moving or insightful. Lezley's character Collie is called "Lady" and Eric's Frank is called "Fella" to give them some unearned "everyman" significance.
MAJOR SPOILER:
Amidst tons of insider stuff about porno filmmaking, climax is Lezley's off-screen death in Vegas on her (unshown) honeymoon there with unlikely college professor! Julian (maybe he majored in tattooing or penis pump demonstration). We, the poor porno viewers, are supposed to get choked up over the gimmicky death, made even more confusing by the garbled time-sequence of Stanley's script, and hailed in a nonsensical "moment of silence for Collie" on the porno set of a film within a film directed by Stanley but with a lookalike actor named "Fluid" playing the great man! I had coincidentally just watched a Nicholas Sparks stinker "The Best of Me" right before and I cannot say which is worse in the maudlin script department, though Sparks sure gives Stanley a run for his money.
What offended me is that Zen is misused here too as the leading lady not worthy of billing -merely filling in for Chloe in Chloe's movie as it were. She tries hard but her scenes are badly written and awkwardly directed. Eric, a terrifically talented farceur, is unfunny as a morose, sad-sack - thoroughly misusing his talents. Sexy Cherokee is tossed in as the "saver" -hot on the porno set making love and later ridiculously tossed in for an extraneous, badly introduced sex scene with Eric.