Okay, first things first. Despite the fact that this DVD is entitled Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease, Carmen does not take off her clothes. She doesn't even come close. She does wear a tight shirt in a room that might be a little chilly by the looks of things, but that's about as intense as it gets. So, if you're like me, and you thought this sounded like a cool title to check out and maybe a good way to kill an hour by watching a girl bounce up and down without any clothes on, you might be disappointed.

In all seriousness, this is a pretty straight forward exercise video. Being the manly man that I am, it may seem odd that I'm reviewing this but I do have a wife who cares about things like physical fitness and spends quite a bit of time at the gym (which leaves me with a few free moments here and there to spin the many DVDs that cross my path) and it's for this reason that I ended up with these titles. So while I'm hardly the Richard Simmons of DVD reviewing, I do spend enough actually watching strippers to feel comfortable checking this title out and subjecting my poor, tolerant wife to trying these moves out. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to hoping for a little T&A on the video though…

After a little introduction by the lovely miss Electra in which she gives a brief rundown of the exercises you're going to be doing in this program, the DVD plays out into three separate routines. Each one of these routines has an introduction section, in which Carmen explains the whys and hows of the various moves she's going to demonstrate, and then a follow through section in which you follow along with the bouncy girls on screen and work up a little bit of a sweat. Here's how it all plays out:

Routine One: This is basically the warm up section. It's here that you do various stretches and warm up exercises like head rolls and leg stretches to get your body limbered up for the next two routines.

Routine Two: The exercises actually being here, as Carmen guides you through various stepping exercises, more head rolls, plenty of hip thrusts, knee lifts, and dips ('to work your butt!).

Routine Three: This part is the actual 'strip tease' section as Carmen encourages you to do things like put your finger in your mouth as you strut across the floor of your living room. By the end of this segment you should have rolled across the floor, done some struts and splayed leg dips (while moving your hands up and down your thighs of course) and a few pivots and crouches to more or less work your lower body.

Carmen states in her introduction that this is the beginners video. Anyone on a reasonably regular fitness routine already probably won't break much of a sweat by giving this one a spin, and there isn't much available here in the way of customization to allow you to target any specific areas. While it's mildly amusing to try out the slides and struts that Carmen makes happen on your TV, it isn't an overly challenging title. If you are a beginner though, you could do a lot worse.

Video:

This straight to video release was shot fullframe and that's just how it is presented on this DVD. Colors look good, they're quite distinct and don't bleed into each other at all and black levels, while hardly dominant throughout the video, remain pretty stable and don't break up at all. There are some mild compression artifacts present pretty much from start to finish though, and some edge enhancement as well. While it's not as a big a deal on a fitness video as it is on an actual movie it is still a tiny bit annoying to see it there. Overall though, the picture isn't too bad on this release.