R.S.V.P.
10.17.06 (7:43 pm) [edit]
Everyone has seen Clue, right? Or maybe Noises Off? Those kinds of films are comedies with lots of people running around and fairly complex but very silly relationships between characters. Oh yes, and there's lots of sex. Granted, maybe it's all innuendo or people talking about past encounters, but it's still woven tightly into the fabric. Noises Off goes one further than Clue's constant shots of Colleen Camp's cleavage. It seems like every minute you see someone in their underwear.What does this have to do with R.S.V.P.? Well, R.S.V.P. is that kind of comedy, except instead of real actors the cast is made up of 80's porn stars and instead of a real director, it has Amero brothers who (surprise!) filmed a bunch of porno "hits" with titles like Blonde Ambition, Every Inch A Lady, and The Lusting Hours.
What on earth possessed these people to make a grab at legitimacy with this R-rated comedy?
While I have no idea why it exists, I'm glad it does, because this movie is entertaining in the way only terrible 80's comedies obsessed with breasts can be. This ranks up there with "classics" like Revenge of the Nerds, Zapped, and Weird Science, only much more poorly made and with hysterical acting.
Let's not beat around the bush here. Haha. This movie is pretty incompetently made. The directing is bland and talentless, but delightfully tacky. No one can act worth a shit, but that's entertaining in its own way. The dialogue is by turns insulting and gloriously politically incorrect. The set design, well, what set design? This is just some guy's house in L.A. with a decent pool! While I wouldn't call the screenplay good (barely serviceable at best, unintentionally hilarious at worst), it somehow manages to be more clever than you would expect.
The movie gets off to an unfortunate start with a painful, boring framing device. Some party got out of hand and now the entire guest list is in front of a patently not funny judge. If you can avoid turning off the movie long enough to get past this painful sequence, a delightfully stupid and goofy movie waits for you.
Dumb, well-meaning, and meaty, Tobey is an aspiring actor in Hollywood, but right now he's a caterer. His job today is to serve food and drink at a party thrown by Bill Edwards, the hot shot producer who just landed the rights to a book that has Hollywood in an uproar. Billed as fiction, this book is actually a thinly veiled expose of Hollywood's leading talents and critics. And they're all coming to this party and so is the author! This is really a pretty good setup, as the guests constantly bicker and jockey for position. Even dopey, beefy Tobey is trying to get on Bill's good side to try for a role. To complicate things, Tobey's hot for Bill's daughter, Bill is cheating on his wife, the governor is cheating on his wife, everyone's cheating on everyone, and someone ends up dead and floating in the pool in true Sunset Boulevard fashion!
Don't get your expectations out of hand, though: this movie is still made by incompetents and funny on accident more often than on purpose. There are fairly attractive girls (and guys) getting naked, some surprisingly goofy and hamfisted sex scenes (how is that people who made sex their careers can be so bad at pretending to have sex?), and some really, really bad jokes.
But I have to be honest. I laughed when the Chinese delivery boy's broken English made Mrs. Edwards think Bill was cheating on her with Tobey. I laughed even more when he came back later as a Mexican food delivery boy and thought the right way to avoid cold beans was to dump gallons of hot sauce into them. It's so stupid that it's charming.
Everyone is so totally lacking in talent that it's almost appalling, but I just can't find the heart to hate this movie. Unlike a million tiresome movies by masters of people standing around saying boring things to each other (every Roger Corman movie, every Coleman Francis movie), this movie just isn't dull. It's always trying and pathetically failing at this or that, but you can tell the cast is having a great time. They seem blissfully unaware of their own total lack of skill, or maybe they just don't care.
Either way, what should be an exercise in pain is actually a fun little diversion, as long as you look at it for what it is: AN R-RATED COMEDY BY 80'S PORN STARS!
By the way, did I mention this movie is full of awful 80's hair and fashion? The least self-conscious movie I have ever seen.
Sad footnote: In 1989 Lem Amero died. Try to guess what from? Come on, come on, you can guess! That's right! AIDS complications!