Tee-Hee, I'm Naked!

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Play-mate of the Apes

(2002, 92 min.)

Starring Misty Mundae, Debbie Rochon, Anoushka, Sharon Engert, Darian Caine, Shelby Taylor, Zachary W. Snygg, Dan Schwab, Terry West.

Directed by John Bacchus.

Three female astronauts crash land on a planet where apes are dominant and humans are treated as animals. But you probably could have guessed that for yourself. The major difference between this and the original, aside from the lack of NRA wonks, is that roughly half of this flick is taken up by its female co-stars making out and bumping bubbles.

While this was clearly made on the quick to capitalize on the release of Tim Burton’s remake, most of the “satire” is actually directed at the 1969 original. (Maybe they couldn’t make head or tail of Burton’s version either.) The one true nod to the remake is in having the scientist ape played by a female (eroti-DTV diva Rochon, who also co-authored the story with the director; I had never seen one of her flicks before and watched this in part to see what she looked like, only to discover she spends the whole film with an ape mask on her head). She comes to believe that humans might be more intelligent than the apes had thought because she observes them dancing. Interestingly, this is the exact opposite conclusion to the one I reach when I see people dancing.

As to some of the other women in the piece: Misty Mundae, another DTV smut queen, plays the erstwhile Heston role. She’s cute in a jailbait-hellspawn kind of way, and while she can’t act, she is spunky. (And unlike Lou Grant, I do like spunk.) There’s Anoushka, as Lt. Pushkintucushkin (yeesh), who I’m sure I’ve seen in something before, though I don’t recognize any of her other credits. And there’s Sharon Engert, as Lt. Fornication (somewhere Noel Coward is roiling in envy at such insouciant wit), who looks pretty good in the photos on her official site, though in the film, her lower lip seems to be in constant danger of sliding right off her face.

As must be thoroughly obvious by now, the humor in this movie is dippy in the extreme (how is it that at this late a date, they weren’t conscious of the fact that characters spontaneously breaking out into a rap number, no matter how anachronistic, is no longer funny, if it ever really was in the first place?). Having said that I have to admit that there are moments where the film wallows so hog deep in its own absurdity that it actually sort of passes over into the realm of absurd-ism. Small consolation, but it’s these moments, along with whatever pleasures the viewer can derive from copious close-ups of enhanced breasts being fondled, that make up any of the entertainment found here.

If there’s a stupider soft-core parody of a major studio release, I don’t want to see it. (Oh, who am I kidding? Naked pin-up girls are naked pin-up girls. Just sever my brainstem and strap a drool cup to my chin. Guess I’m a damn dirty ape after all.)

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