The Bad: Character elements, Moments of performance, Failure to actually satirize the source material.
The Basics: I give reviewing an adult film a fair shake with The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes and find the film to be more generic than an actual clever parody.
As those who follow my reviews regularly know, I rate everything on a constant scale. My scale of 0 – 10 (no points just for showing up!) has consistent criteria and when it comes to movies, those standards are very easy to explain. Movies get up to 3 points for plot, 3 points for character, 3 points for acting and 1 point for special effects. So, Casablanca (reviewed here!) is not just competing against every other drama, it is standing on its own before every other movie of every other genre. That means when I sat down to consider The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes, it was being considered on the same criteria as I considered Casablanca.
The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes is not the Casablanca of erotic films.
As a fan of graphic novels and the DC Comics universe, The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes seemed a surprisingly reasonable erotic movie for me to pick up for review. The photograph on the box of the parody Justice League was enough to make me smile in amusement and shake my head. As a fan of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Batman, as well as one who has read quite a bit of The Justice League Of America, The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes is marketed pretty much directly at geeks like me.
Because the parody is designed to appeal to porn-loving comic book geeks, Extreme Comixxx – which produced the adult film – had to truly target the niche in order to make the movie something other than a soon-to-be-discount bin adult film. Unfortunately, they failed, which was disappointing when one considers how strongly the movie opened as a legitimate parody of the foibles of super heroes in the DC Universe. Ironically, what saves The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes from being utterly unwatchable and unworthy the buy is the bonus content and swag that comes with the DVD release.
The villains in the world – Lex Luthor, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Zatanna (wait, Zatanna?!), Harley Quinn and The Boss and The General – have created a weapon to end porn or blow something up or some other crazy scheme. The Justice League unites to save porn and the world. After Aquaman decides to return to the sea, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, and the Flash work to track down the villains, find the weapon and save the world. Cut between scenes, the Penguin appears, mostly just to wave at the camera.
Superman goes out and is promptly ensorcelled by Zatanna, Batman and Robin take on Catwoman together and she gives them a clue. Green Lantern gets Harley Quinn and the Flash takes on the Boss. The movie takes a little detour so Lex Luthor and Poison Ivy can get it on and Wonder Woman takes on the General, a character made up just for the movie. When the Justice League successfully thwarts the villains’ plan, they reward themselves by going back to the Hall Of Justice for a blow bang on Wonder Woman.
As one who has not watched porn in quite some time (thank you married life!), I was out of step with the jargon. A blow bang is basically a group sex situation wherein all of the men stand around a woman jerking themselves until she finishes them off with a blowjob. In predictable erotica fashion, in The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes, that leaves Wonder Woman covered in cum.
The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes is pretty much your typical adult film. It has a somewhat ludicrous sensibility to it in order to get the characters having sex. There are some moments that are genuinely erotic and almost everyone looks ridiculously good, though the movie keeps characters in their costumes for the most part. The notable exceptions on the casting fronts are Scott Lyons as Robin, who seems especially old, and Ron Jeremy, whose presence in the movie is utterly pointless.
What the writers and director of The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes fail to grasp is the actual worthiness of a legitimate erotic parody of the Justice League Of America. The film wastes opportunities to have a decent or interesting story and commentary on the foibles of the Justice League, their costumes, etc., to make a very typical erotic movie (though it is interesting to note that for a geek-themed erotica, there is a noticeable lack of woman-on-woman action). More than getting very odd details wrong – like Zatanna being a villain in the movie – the film has some unsettling moments where it seems those involved have no idea of the source material they are making a “parody” of. So, for example, when Zatanna is done taking advantage of Superman and releases him, he threatens to kill her! Even more disturbing is the performance of Barry Scott. Barry Scott plays the Flash in The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes and his performance is homogenously angry. He just seems to be using his genitals as a weapon far too often and either Scott is a terrible actor who entirely missed the character he was portraying or this is a man for whom sex is a violent act and he does his best performance of mean sex I think I’ve ever been unfortunate enough to witness.
What saves The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes from being utterly worthless is Chanel Preston. Chanel Preston plays Wonder Woman in The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes and she is actually an astonishingly good actress. How do I know this? Most of the bonus features on the two-disc DVD set feature Preston walking around showing off the set, talking about what filming the movie was like and stuff like that. She sounds nothing like she does on-camera and she is informative, fun and seems to have a real sense of humor about her work. Rather oddly, the interviewer does not press her for actual details, so when Preston educated me (as a viewer, not in any personal capacity) to what exactly a “blow bang” was and she said she was really looking forward to the almost hour-long sequence, there was no answer to my shouted question “Why?!”
Ultimately, The Justice League Of Pornstar Heroes is fun, has its moments, but is hardly worth coming back to for anything but the bonus features. And the trading cards. Damn, how could a company that seems to know the niche just not “get it?!”
For other movies with a strong erotic component, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Story Of O
Kama Sutra: A Tale Of Love
Henry And June
3/10
For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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