American Virgin (2000)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Brilliant and touching

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Whenever an actor or director I like passes away, I often find something somewhat obscure to watch in their honor, especially if I've seen all of their most famous output. Sometimes I dig up something really bad, though, and that's the case with American Virgin, which I watched in memory of Bob Hoskins. Robert Loggia and Hoskins star as rival pornographers. When Loggia's teenage daughter (Mena Suvari, who made this film shortly before American Pie and American Beauty) goes off to work for Hoskins, a war between the two men begins. This mostly consists of the two actors hamming it up yelling at each other. This movie, made in Europe, has no idea how to make anything funny. For a while, it's amusing in just how weird it is, and, let's face it, Loggia and Hoskins can ham it up fun, but, after a while, it gets just plain boring.

This film features the daughter of a porn magnate with a boy friend she once trusted who appears to have strayed from the straight path of love. In a mixture of despair and retaliation she agrees to be the first star (victim?) on a new TV series which once every month will feature a virgin experiencing her first sexual liaison on camera. The film creates a parody of pornographic movie makers interested only in the audience such a program will achieve, and this is deliberately exaggerated to the point of being grossly overdrawn. Ultimately, it culminates in a pure slapstick sequence where the boy friend manages to penetrate her dressing room on the eve of the performance and convince her that he did not stray in the way she thought - she then tells the producers of the show that she is quitting, with the obvious results. The film ends after the TV connections have been severed by a sword leaving the happy couple able to consummate their liaison in relative peace. This parody of the porn industry displays promoters trying to bring their new series to screen in a very unkind light, whilst simultaneously providing some quite sharp satire. I did not feel it was as bad as some of the IMDb User Comments suggest; but the aim of the film makers appears to have been simply to create easily achieved comedy sequences - not to make a film with any social significance - and as a result much of this satire can readily be lost leaving a very cheap and tawdry residue..Ultimately I felt the film trivialised a serious issue, aiming to succeed as a comedy rather than to achieve any recognition for dealing with an issue of real social concern. Some of it was fun to watch, but much of the rest was (fortunately) very forgettable. The subject matter could have been treated much more realistically by, for example, introducing public reactions to the proposed TV series. Newspaper reviews could have been shown which on the one hand commended the proposed new series as contributing to the new attitude towards sexual freedom, and on the other condemned the TV channel concerned for further unjustified exploitation of the difficulties young people may experience in establishing worthwhile long-term relationships. These could have been augmented by featuring letters to the editor from fictional individuals with pre-determined viewpoints. Instead we had only cartoon level reactions to very extreme behaviour exhibited by cartoon type characters, which were mostly not worth watching.My final assessment is that this film provided a classic example of a lost opportunity; and that, despite its challenging subject matter, it is unfortunately not worth more than an IMDb rating of 2 out of 10.

Ira Israel wrote an incredible good script and his vision was truly well executed by a talended director. Bob Hoskin is way funny and the entire plot is exellent. I hope this great team of people will do another film soon and meanwhile I highly recommand this picture to everyone.

Mena Suvari's third movie in the past two years with "American" in the title and also dealing with sex. A great comedy, with great performances by Bob Hoskins as an Adult Film producer and the interactive sex machine he invents. Mena plays Katrina, whose father is a rival adult film producer. Hoskins recruits Katrina to be his "interactive virgin" for a live TV event in which people who bought his contraption will be able to participate. Bob Hoskins and Robert Loggia give standout comedic performances that left me rolling in the floor.