Short Takes

Exploration of the intermingling of gamblers AND sexoholics anonymous continues in sunny Santa Barbara (because ritzy New York locations are so goldang EXPENSIVE) where an all-new gaggle of horn'd up well-to-dos bet each other they can't diddle each other and get all handsy anyway. Does it make a lick of sense? Well, yeah, IF YOU PAY STRICT ATTENTION!!! Purely as a public service, yours truly did and enjoyed very nearly every salacious frame. Forget all the polish and star power of the MTV-ified Dangerous Liaisons retread. The horsey prequel. Here we've got a juicy after-prep-school erotic thriller where they forgot to take out all the dirty parts. Bad music. Awful acting. And when it can't get much more astonishing -- a cringe-worthy RAPE tossed off as a mere plot device. Yet there's something magnetic in Hawaiian honey Kristina Anapau's pint-sized Queen Bitch and her court of canoodlers. Could SHE alongside dueling boy-toys Kerr Smith and Nathan Wetherington be the magic trio to muster Blown Away 2!?! Three breasts. Thong flinging. Slow-mo diddling. Gratuitous ping pong match. Advanced hetro tongue rasslin. Ol' falling-in-love montage. Mickey slipping. Kristina twists the knife: "You're off to prison, where the sex is never boring!" (2004, 85 mins, 1.78:1 anam, DD 5.1, Trailers.)