Mutual Needs (1997)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I was pleasantly surprised when I viewed "Mutual Needs." It's a Playboy produced movie, so you pretty much know what you're gonna get--hot girls and a wafer-thin plot. This movie reminded me a lot of another Playboy movie about corporate warfare, "The Corporate Ladder." It's no coincidence this flick and TCL were both made in 1997.The movie starts out innocently enough--a man gets dumped by his girlfriend shortly before his 10th annual high school reunion. Obviously afraid of being the laughingstock of the event, he rushes out an hires a hooker to go to the reunion with him. In no time, the hooker, played effortlessly by Rochelle Swanson, makes her way through the party, introducing herself as the man's wife. It works like a charm! In fact, the guy lands a cushy $120,000-a-year job working for one of his former high school classmates. Now, Charlene wants payment. That's where the fun begins.In a cross between "The Corporate Ladder" with a hint of "Scorned", Charlene makes life a living hell for this poor man, forging loan contracts and running up astronomically high credit bills. Soon enough, however, her past catches up with her.The sex scenes in this movie were relatively short and seemed to be placed correctly, unlike some other movies of this genre where some of the sex scenes seem to have little to do with the plot.It drags on in a few places, but not enough to say, "There's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back." Richard Grieco, a familiar-sounding C-list actor, gets top billing in this movie. Gotta have that star power!!Sex: C+ Women: B+ Story: B Overall: B

What a waste of time-- A supposed psychological-sexual-thriller that certainly isn't psychological, barely sexual and offers no thrills that I was aware of. "Mutual Needs" is the story of a sniveling idiot who spends his time playing video games at work and telling jokes that fall flat, yet who manages-- with the help of a too-good-to-be-true call girl-- to con his way into a $150,000 a year ! job with a former high school rival. If you've ever seen a movie where someone is not as they seem, then you already know the rest of the plot and needn't bother watching this bland dreck.As far as casting-in-order-to-put-the-name-on-the-video-box goes, it should be noted that this movie features Dee Wallace-Stone who, mercifully, has only about four seconds of screen time. A bloated Richard Grieco (who gets top billing in the credits, mind you) has a few seconds more, including helping out in the pivotal turn-the-tables-on-the-psycho ending that such films as these feature.If a storm knocks out all other channels other than the one airing this cinematic lightweight, read a book.

Whenever the Playboy logo appears on screen, the viewer is alerted that what follows will be professionally staged and directed. The cast will be attractive and will include some well-known people from the second or third tier (here it's Richard Grieco, on a break from shooting " A Night At The Roxbury"). Their acting will be above par, and the love scenes will be tastefully done, integral to the plot, and non-gratuitous. Think of it as an OSHA warning or the little note from the Surgeon General on that pack of Marlboros.There's really not much here for fans of late-night cable weirdness. We have the story of a corporate drone who, with the help of Rent-A-Babe, re-invents himself for his tenth year reunion party, The rented babe however turns out to be a wicked and manipulative siren leading our poor sap into the ruin of Chapter 11. If you're looking for a compelling movie on the theme of a Wicked Woman leading a Good Man astray, "Out Of The Past" with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer is the perfect choice. If you're looking for gratuitous nudity and cheap thrills, Playboy has a whole series of hot-body videos. But this trite hybrid is neither convincing drama nor sufficiently prurient trash.The only wild card in this dull hand is the presence of Rochelle Swanson as the wicked woman, Charlene. Rochelle is a lush brunette, who could easily reign as Queen of Late-Night Cable Land, were it not for a certain deadly coyness. Exhibit A is a torrid private dance for our victim. Admittedly, she looks terrific in black and the garter-belt, stockings and high heels are a nice fetish touch. But after a few charming moves, only the bra disappears and the scene segues into another routine session of bumping bodies.In Exhibit B, our hero comes home early and finds Charlene with her partner in crime, Josie (played by Sydney Coale Phillips). The suggestion is subtle; they look fetching in their midriff-baring outfits and presumably they weren't discussing Hegelian dialectic upstairs. But we never get to see the footage from the bedroom cam and so we wonder why the notion was introduced.The final nail in the coffin has Charlene showing up at the office, wearing only a fur coat and bringing a mid-day snack. She quickly loses the coat and for a brief moment, the scene seems full of promise. We are treated to a lingering shot of her enchanting backside as she shows off the Daily Special. But as she moves in, the camera suddenly gets coy and hastily arranges contrivances to block any explicit views. It reminds me of that running gag in the Austin Powers' movies as Mike Myers, ostensibly nude, wanders through a room filled with objects strategically placed between the camera and his private parts. In Austin Powers One and Two, the device is funny and Freudian. Here it's just clumsy.This Puritanism seems quaintly retro in a Nineties Playboy product. In the late Sixties, Playboy pushed at the edge of explicitness in men's magazines until full frontal nudity became commonplace. Now famous figure skaters and fading starlets routinely appear nude in Playboy and the other magazines look like Ob-Gyn Journals. Thirty years later, the camera demurely blocks an explicit shot, like a blushing geisha.Part of the explanation may be in Rochelle's other film credits. The IMDb lists a lot of items with the words "secret" and "indecent" and numbers in their titles, all part of the Shannon Tweed franchise. It's hard to imagine that, not long ago, Shannon Tweed was the benchmark for late-night cable. But then again, not long ago, 166MHz was considered to be a powerhouse processor.Times change.

First, the movie is produced by Playboy, so you should expect beautiful women. Sandra (Tricia Lee Pascoe) was a cut above the usual fair and hooked me instantly. Whoa. Kudos to her surgeon! The rest of the movie is about the guy she dumps in the first scene and how he goes to his class reunion to attempt to outdo his class rival, (Richard Grieco). Of course, there is more sex. Most of it pretty decent. This one is better than your common movie in this genre.