DOWSE guide to the movies                                                                                         

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  New Century of Cinema


DOWSE Guide to the Movies
by Tony Lee editor of Pigasus Press

Body Shots

100 minutes (18) EV
Director: Michael Cristofer
review by Rob Marshall

Almost fatally flawed US brat-pack style movie, Body Shots begins as a markedly brash, talking-to-camera romantic comedy, flails clumsily through the character studies of a mixed set of emotionally shallow 1990s yuppies (sharply dressed party animals, makeup-ad glam blondes - both genders oozing sex appeal), then collapses finally into a risibly vacuous questioning of the so-called 'date-rape' phenomenon. The only familiar face here is that of Jerry O'Connell, somewhat awkwardly trying to shed the goody whiz-kid image cultivated for TV's much-troubled Sliders. He's at the centre of the sleazy plot here, but director Michael Cristofer (the screenwriter of American History X) does this film no favours by presenting O'Connell's rampant alcoholic character as shamefully lacking in remorse for his actions - which include beating up a bouncer at the nightclub he gets thrown out of.
 The whole thing is overly style conscious, and it's actually difficult to figure out who this circus of errors is aimed at, or why. I'm immediately suspicious of any film that claims (however quietly) to speak to, or for, a particular generation. This pretentious and sloppily executed drama undermines everything of significance it tries to say - by shooting and cutting in a relentlessly fussy manner when more straightforward techniques would, perhaps, have improved things considerably.

Rob Marshall
originally published online in VideoVista #17, August 2000 issue

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