Overall Rating
  Awesome: 34.04%
Worth A Look: 29.79%
Average: 17.02%
Pretty Bad: 8.51%
Total Crap: 10.64%
3 reviews, 29 user ratings
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| sex, lies, and videotape |
by Chris Parry
"What do you call a ménage-a-trois when it involves four people?"
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An old friend rolls into town with a convertible, a blonde mullet, and a trunk full of video equipment. You invite him in to stay a few days and before long everyone is masturbating on camera for him. If you were to break Sex Lies and Videotape down to two sentences, you’d have it right there. Fortunately, quality feature films generally require more than two sentences to be told, and a Steven Soderbergh feature film can sometimes take hours to explain.James Spader has a problem, and a camera. Peter Gallagher has a problem, and a wife. Andy MacDowell has two problems in that she’s way uptight and married to Peter Gallagher. And Laura San Giacomo is Gallagher’s problem, and MacDowell’s sister, and married to nobody. Confused? Well chill a second and we’ll explore a little deeper.
Spader plays a long lost friend of Gallagher’s, back home after many years away. He’s a little weird, but Gallagher ain’t no saint himself. Gallagher’s wife isn’t comfortable with the strange man around, but she’s a little turned on by him, which is odd since A) his wiener has no life in it, and B) Andy’s frigid as a three month frozen Popsicle. Her sister, on the other hand, is looser than the wheel nuts on a Ford Explorer - take her for a turn around the parking lot and she’ll be flat on her back in no time at all.
What does it all mean? Well, we could decide that it’s a study about repression, lies and using sex as emotion, or we could say it’s a story about how everyone is fucked up in their own special way, or we could say it’s a PG-13 skin-flick where no skin is actually shown, or we could say, as I do, that it’s an interesting ninety minutes spent seeing where Soderbergh came from.
The story just isn’t riveting stuff, nor is the message particularly that important. Is anything major revealed? Are we held privy to a breakout performance or three? Andie MacDowell certainly shows she’s respected as an actress for a reason, and Spader doesn’t give off a speck of ‘B grade’, despite the fact that he’s fast heading towards C grade most of the time. Gallagher and San Giacomo are, at best, underwritten and under-performed.
Nah, I don’t think we’re missing anything here; it’s simply ninety minutes of sexual tension with little pay-off. Maybe I’m missing some immense point here, but I tend to think the director behind such subtle messages as those in Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Oceans Eleven just couldn’t find the big finish that he needed in the end.By all means, an interesting ninety minutes, just not a great ninety.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2423&reviewer=1
originally posted: 04/02/02 13:18:55
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USA
02-Aug-1989 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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