Backstage Passes

Roy Karch once again delivers a sub-par feature to Adam & Eve, carelessly scripted and produced as an ultra-quickie: lousy sets, disinterested performances and minimal attempt at a story line. I'm reviewing this for the record, as part of a comprehensive overview of the venerable A & E label.

Lovely blonde Aussie Jodie Moore stars as a girl who is friends with the star-producer of a soap opera (Joel Lawrence, in a smug walk-through), and thus hired to be the make-up girl on set. Writer-director Karch flubs even the sole set-up premise of the show, as he has Joel warn Jodie to keep everything on the q.t. Until his pending divorce to wife Mia Smiles is final. Yet when Smiles inevitably shows up to cause trouble, she asks for four months back alimony due her from Lawrence, hardly consistent with the "divorce pending" concept.

Five lousy sex scenes are inserted as the cast and crew of the soap intertwine, giving Karch a license to stage them (per the "backstage" format) any old place, impromptu. So he's passed off a dreary all-sex video as if it were part of Adam & Eve's Couples Romance concept. Nothing of any interest happens, and the crummy ending after Joel's inevitable money shot is placed on Jodie's kisser has her turning to the camera to ask: "Are they still rolling?" - cut to end credits.

Anna Malle's opening sex scene with Steve Hatcher features a condom, while subsequent XXX is executed bareback. Even a favorite of mine Mia Smiles merely phones it in as Joel's better half. Director Karch keeps showing up on screen as the soap's director, and the brief soap-within-a-film scenes are relentlessly dull, just like the surrounding footage.