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Virtual Sexuality
*
Rated on a 4-star
scale
UK
Directed by Nick Hurran
Written by Nick Fisher
Based upon the book by Chloe Rayban
CAST.....
Laura Fraser..... Justine
Rupert Penry-Jones..... "Jake"
Luke De Lacey..... Chas
Kieran O'Brien..... Alex
Marcelle Duprey..... Fran
Natasha Bell..... "Hoover"
Nick Hurran's "Virtual Sexuality"
is, in at least one respect, thought-provoking -- after seeing it, I couldn't
stop wondering which part deserved the most hatred. When a film is crass
and stupid, with dimensionless characters, shallow philosophies, bizarrely
nonsensical plot developments and awful concepts on how to use special effects,
there are just so many choices...
The movie opens with a direct address from Justine
(Laura Fraser), a drop-dead gorgeous 17-year old girl who's desperate to
lose her virginity. Ignoring the implausibility of this, it goes on to show
how Justine sees no likely candidates for her deflowering, viewing her only
two male friends as a degenerate and a nerd. When a blind date to another
potential beau is cancelled, she finds herself killing time at a computer
fair, and steps inside a virtual reality makeover booth.
Still upset about missing out on the date, Justine
uses the technology to create her ideal man. Then, a gas explosion a few
blocks away somehow causes the computers to go haywire, and gee-whiz -- Justine
herself gets the body of her ideal man! I've seen hundreds of movies where
unrelated explosions cause people to switch bodies, and believe me, it means
that the filmmakers are out of ideas.
Things get even more complicated for Justine --
or, as a man, known as "Jake" (Rupert Penry-Jones) -- when she discovers
that there's another version of herself out there still existing in her own
body. This doesn't make sense, but the film uses the dilemma to stretch to
feature length.
Once upon a time, I had ideas for movies that
resembled "Virtual Sexuality". I was six years old, and still dismissed them
quickly. To think that adults could create this drivel, and seriously pass
it off as entertainment, is embarrassing. It's obviously aimed at people
with attention deficiency disorders, proven by the way everything we need
to remember is furiously flashed onscreen as computerised bullet-points --
in one scene, even the words "dry leaves" inspire this visual
pandemonium.
The attention-deficient will also -- perhaps --
fail to notice how zombie-like and immature the characters are. They display
pre-pubescent knowledge and experience of both sex and life, as do the writer
and director, in how they paint their caricature players. The aforementioned
degenerate, for example, is shown bragging about his fictional conquests,
and we're expected to believe that a locker-room full of 17-year olds would
take him seriously, and be amazed. The nerd wears thick glasses and a mackintosh,
and has three computers. The town slut always wears the same high heels,
the same makeup, the same tight dress, and always sticks her breasts out
in the same way.
Despite the complete disconnection with reality,
"Virtual Sexuality" still has the gall to include soppy moralising, when
the mocked nerd turns into the film's nice guy, and spouts a bunch of
clichés about looking beyond appearances. Shockingly, the film even
forgets these simple lessons, to deliver a message of superficiality and
conformity, based on cruel teenage standards of separatism based on
beauty.
What's most offensive about the whole "Virtual
Sexuality" experience is what its creators are telling interviewers. They
compare their product to John Hughes's teen flicks, like "The Breakfast Club"
and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Those great films, and even "Weird Science",
which had a similarly fantastical premise to this trash, explored the ups
and downs of adolescence with enthralling drama, humour and truth, whereas
during "Virtual Sexuality", my friend and I turned to admiring the neon "no
smoking" sign on the wall. When subjected to inane tomfoolery, the mind seeks
any distraction.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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