Short Takes

When Brad's not tweezing his eyebrows, grinning like an underwear model from the J.C. Penny catalog, or driving his convertible Porsche through the same tunnel OVER AND OVER AGAIN, the California ad exec's (Adam Baratta) womanizing ways are stymied when his icy heart inadvertently BEATS for a doe-eyed Japanese sweetie named Yuki (Jennifer Tung). Yet these starcrossed lovers sure don't have an easy go of it. Yuki's roommate, Playmate Carrie Stevens, sows seeds of doubt in Brad's puny brainpan when she isn't riding him like a mechanical bull or sending over Swedish sensation Victoria Silvstedt to seduce him. Not sure WHY she does that exactly, but BLESS her! Ms. Silvstedt purrs and coos enough to melt steel without even losing a STITCH of clothes. Director Masashi Nagadoi, who also attempts comic relief as Brad's office boy, sadly keeps things too chaste for this to qualify as an erotic thriller, yet the requisite red herrings, double-crosses and other ponderous plot twists are certainly present in this dizzy disaster. CineSchlocker fave Jennifer Rubin gets above-the-title credit for about 30 seconds of screen time as Brad's flirtatious shrink. Two breasts (don't blink). No corpses. Obnoxious answering machine message. Reefer madness. Gratuitous advice-dispensing barkeep. Old "squirt gun that looks like the real thing" gag. Multiple diddling. Gratuitous Yakuza toughs. Ms. Silvstedt sizzles, "I guess in your line of work you also discover unknown talent ... Well, I DO have some talent you can discover!" (2001, Originally She Said I Love You, 83 mins, Fullframe, DD 2.0, No extras provided for review.)