Body Shots
The Los Angeles club scene is a place of booze-fueled decadence and debauchery. In a night full of possibilities, eight 20-somethings take to the clubs seeking good times, companionship and maybe a little sex. But in the harsh light of the morning after, their worlds are thrown into a spin of confusion when hungover Sara accuses hard-partying Mike of date rape. Loyalties are tested as each among them is forced to take sides.
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- Cast:
- Jerry O'Connell , Amanda Peet , Sean Patrick Flanery , Tara Reid , Ron Livingston , Emily Procter , Joe Basile
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Sara Olswang (Tara Reid) returns home crying to Jane Bannister (Amanda Peet) that she had been raped by womanizing football player Mike Penorisi (Jerry O'Connell) after a Friday night out in the club. The single L.A. girls had gone out with friends Emma Cooper (Sybil Temchen) and Whitney Bryant (Emily Procter). Mike was with Rick Hamilton (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Shawn Denigan (Brad Rowe). Trent (Ron Livingston) got left outside for wearing his golf outfit. He manages to sneak in. Mike gets into a brawl outside and he leaves with Sara. What happens afterward is a matter of he says, she says.These eight singles are obsessed with sex, partying, and the ups and downs of the single life. The scattered points of view and the narrow focus of their interest leave the characters feeling rather shallow. There is way too much pontificating on every aspect of sex. It may work if this is an artsy movie about singles and sex. It's more about the rape and the conflicting recollections. The only thing that truly matters in this movie is Sara and Mike's story about what happened. There are too many characters to follow and they don't all connect with the rape. It's not focused.Then there is Tara Reid and Jerry O'Connell themselves. Tara's real life intrudes into this movie. None of these characters are likable and O'Connell is the worst of all. He plays a lot of these kinds of loud-mouthed jerks. The police interrogation is really off-putting. His character won't shut up. For some reason, the police let his friend stay and he kept trying to shut Mike up. It is hard to take such a stupid character. There two clashing story styles do not mesh and both of them are somewhat off-putting.
After watching this movie twice in 1999, first in a movie theater where the board of censors have butchered most of the graphic scenes and second on a DVD where I've seen the complete uncut version, I was wondering if this movie is really suitable for public exhibition. I consider this movie as a soft core porn movie that will guarantee an X rating if this will be shown on conservative countries. The plot, the story line, the conflict are all tackling nothing but S-E-X. All of the characters in the movie are being portrayed as sex starved and wild party animals who wants nothing but fun. Oh! yeah! I admit I've got aroused by Tara Reid's voluptuous body but during her violent rape scene with Jerry O'Connell, I've totally lost my sympathies to her. She's crying to death that she was raped but how come she seduced Jerry when both of them were intoxicated? It's very clear that it was a consensual sex that transpired. I've almost puked in a scene when Ron Livingston sucked the breast of a 40 year old woman in public, GROSS!!!! Brad Rowe & Emily Temchen's quickie in the parking lot made me sick. Emily Procter's character was nothing short of a bust and Amanda Peet & Sean Patrick Flannery's characters were put into waste. Only perverts and masochists will enjoy this movie. This movie should be shown on Playboy Channel or any Adult channels on cable TV.
An end of nineties and 20th century film which attempts to discuss issues of relationships between twenty-something men and women, sex, rape, and our opinions on each. It does not try to be too clever though, some of the characters are unsavoury but the cast are all young, fresh faced Hollywood stars, not the big names though. It revolves around two groups of friends, men and women who discuss things like the first date, sex, and what they want in an partner. They meet on a night out and most end up sleeping with each other. However, the next day one of the women accuses one of the men of rape. We then see how each character rally's around their friends, how the men are pushed away at times, how each group can mistrust each other, and how the cops try to work it all out. Jerry O Connell stars as Michael, a Jock accused by Sara. We are then shown in flashback both sides of the story. Sara says she was raped, but has a history of going with the wrong type of guy and being sexually forward. Michael says it was not rape, and that she consented. As there is no real proof we have to make up our own minds, leaving us to think about the state of modern relationships. However, there is comedy in the film, and all the performances are good, particularly from Emily Procor whose part is small. The dialogue is good with some funny lines, and the discussion between friends about sex is both funny and honest and will please both sexes.7 out of 10
What is this beyond-reason, Zenlike denial of self, masquerading as sophistication that the new Millennium is having us wallow in? No, Body Shots (1999) is NOT about the uselessness of the he said/she said accusations over drunken date rapes. Sure, that's a point worth making, but it really belongs in another movie all its own. This story, if the editor would just leave it alone, is about the inability of humans to live amongst each other with any intimacy.The characters have more sex than they appear to know what to do with, because their sex lives are still at odds with who they are, or aspire to being. All natural warmth is absent. People vaguely comment about their constant loneliness, but it doesn't bother any one of them nearly enough.Amanda Peet as Jane is much too stereotypically thin and toothy, and it's getting irritating to have that always work. Enough! Why can't she be cast as the girl who gets bedded and not called back?Women who look like her in real life are being used like tissues, by men with I.Q.s lower than the tissue. Guys just like Rick (Sean Patrick Flanery), pathetic "professionals" who suck at even their own jobs and who are skating on bull, but somehow in the corrupt business world they're still paid enormous paychecks that they will never, ever, deserve.So out here, not only is marriage on the way out, but so are male-female love relationships. That's what Body Shots is REALLY about. (I don't know how gay relationships are going; I can only wish them more luck.) Straight men are becoming totally lost, subhuman, autistic. Arguably abnormal. Alright, too many women are, as well. Maybe it's something in our food. Some late-onset autism cases were traced (in real life) to essentially food allergies, an inability to metabolize staple foods. Autism affects males 5 times as often as it does females, so maybe there's something to all this...The ever-so-slightly-hopeful approach towards the only really normal (nice) guy of Body Shots, Shawn Denigan (Brad Rowe) is a) ineffectual because he's stopped fighting against the offensive/criminal hosing-guy jerk, Mike (Jerry O'Connell), and b) even his possible girlfriend, Sarah (Tara Reid), is too stupid to take him for what he is: a normal human being; complaining that his niceness is just too much for her! Hello! ... She even says an astoundingly stupid thing to camera: "And you just kinda fall into bed with them. It's safer. It's just sex, you know?" -No, you idiot, "Just sex" is diametrically opposed to "safe".This is NOT sophistication. It's naïve. Getting involved is what we're supposed to be doing! We're supposed to accept people with faults, because the real world is not a virtual play-environment; that's not reality's job. If we over-control our relationships, how will we ever learn to be fair, as opposed to a little tool fit for no-one, like Sarah?With characters this far out of whack (and it really doesn't matter what they look like, does it? They're all beautiful, unhappy, lonely idiots- I'm pretty sure that's the point), it's surprising and laughable that the healthiest "relationship" happens between the universally (amongst this ship of tools) disliked Trent (Ron Livingston), and the sex-goddess, Whitney (Emily Procter). When she gets kinky on him, he reacts with self-deprecating humour! I really like every bit of thesping Ron Livingston does in Body Shots. It's obvious that he's the best actor among them. The rest are playing characters that are not such a stretch. Livingston's performance is very natural and easy. I especially liked the way he talks about his "chew toy". (For those who don't know, Ron's the elder Livingston; his younger brother John did some nice work the same year in The Sterling Chase (1999). Both Livingston brothers are pretty charismatic).But the best scene surely has to be the grittiest, and kudos to David McKenna for his gutsy original story, as well as Michael Cristofer for his direction. The staccato beat of drumsticks as Shawn allows pure horniness take him and his companion, Emily (Sybil Temchen), over on the bonnet of that car, is very, very effective; it's exactly how I would have done it (-the soundtrack; with the sticks, people!). Moreover, I really like that the scene happens to the supposedly shyest, most normal guy, Shawn. It gives him balance, and shows us Sarah's ridiculous underestimation of him.But why does he claim he doesn't drink when he does? Is he a recovering alcoholic? If so, why is there no mention of that? ...Plus I have to take issue with the sudden appearance of the c*nd*m.There was no time... I need to see the Director's Cut.I am sorry that Emily (Sybil Temchen) feels ripped off, denuded, used, drunk, lost, afterwards. She hadn't chosen any of it. Yet again (I realize she talks about sometimes not wanting to choose so you don't have to berate yourself for how things turn out, but she still ends up berating herself, DOESN'T SHE?). So Emily and her self-esteem are back at square one. Watch her rueful facial reaction when Shawn rushes over to Sarah's side. Despite the shared night of shame between him and Emily, he can ignore it all, because he has someone else to care for, to go to; to cleanse his guilt. She DOESN'T. So Sybil Temchen is the other great thespian.Once the date rape happens, it affects all the close friends. Specifically it suppresses the not-well-justified fledgling relationship between Jane and Rick, who are now in opposite camps. Irresponsibility leads to regret. And impotence. Note their ennui/chasm in bed.So this is a good cautionary tale. Unfortunately things are already just as bad, or worse, in the real world, and everyone is asleep at the wheel. Sleepers, wake! Resist this much self-indulgence!