Not everyone gets second chances in life, and it's really annoying to see someone waste theirs with so little effort, care, or concern. I'm talking to you, Burt Reynolds!

Prior to his well-deserved "comeback" via an excellent performance in P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights, Mr. Reynolds was floundering away in movies like Cop and a Half, Trigger Happy, and Meet Wally Sparks. But then came the role of porn king Jack Horner (which also came with an Oscar nomination), and it looked like Burt Reynolds was about to enjoy a resurgence on par with John Travolta's Pulp Fiction comeback.

It never happened. Since 1997, the always likeable yet desperately clueless Burt Reynolds has shown up in multiplex muck like The Crew, Driven, and Without a Paddle, but those flicks look like masterpieces compared with Burt's bread & butter: the direct-to-video junkpile.

Ever seen Crazy Six, Hunter's Moon, or Tempted? How about Pups, The Hollywood Sign, Stringer, or Snapshots? Probably not, and I doubt that even Burt owns 'em on DVD.

How long ago and far away does Smokey and the Bandit seem these days? Don't answer until you've subjected yourself to the intelligence-rape that is Cloud 9, a volleyball "comedy" that has just as many laughs as a gall bladder operation.

Produced and co-written by long-time Reynolds buddy Albert S. Ruddy (yes, the same guy who produced The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, but also, keep in mind, wrote the screenplays for Bad Girls, Megaforce, and (yikes) Cannonball Run 2), and directed by astonishing hack Harry Basil (The 4th Tenor, My 5 Wives, Funky Monkey), Cloud 9 is every bit as atrocious as its DVD case plainly implies. Worse than that, actually.

In this awful, awful piece of wasted celluloid, Reynolds plays a wise-ass loser who decides to turn a handful of strippers into a professional beach volleyball team. True to moronic formula, there's a Russian girl with a dumb accent, a Latino girl who hates rich people, a black girl with a large booty, and a hayseed hottie who bends down a lot. So they play volleyball.

That's all there is, trust me.

Along for the ride and a quick, skimpy paycheck are D.L. Hughley as Burt's son, Angie Everhart as an aging stripper who just happened to be a volleyball wiz back in the day, and Paul Rodriguez as a Mexican landscaper who poses as an Asian guy because he gets more business that way. (I can only imagine how Asian people will respond to this performance, but I was offended solely on a comedic level.)

So the girls (who are very hot and terrible actresses, all) slowly learn how to become a team while the comic material hovers firmly at crotch level. Example: Try chugging a beer every time someone in this flick gets hit in the nuts. The thing just keeps slogging along with its witless schtick and 18th generation sports clichés, and then up pops a cameo by Tom Arnold or Gary Busey or Tony Danza or Gabrielle Reece ... a professional volleyball player who really ought to know better (and have enough money) than to appear in something this resoundingly terrible.

"They're not hookers! They're strippers!" is the funniest line in the movie. So funny, in fact, that they recycle it 4 or 5 times. Enjoy.

The DVD

Video: Choose between a half-decent anamorphic widescreen transfer on side A, or if you want to make an abysmal evening even more painful, flip the disc over and watch this crap-heap in full frame.

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, with optional subtitles in English and Spanish.

Extras: As if the movie wasn't visual and aural torture enough, there are three wretched featurettes included. Hoosiers Meets Hooters: Behind Cloud 9 is a 5-minute collection of beachside interviews in which several actors say many stupid things; Burt Reynolds' Fight Club: Directing a Rumble is a 2-minute look at Cloud 9's embarrassingly inept 35-second "fight scene"; and Being Gary Busey: The Cameo Outtakes is a 2-minute reel of patented Busey weirdness.

Final Thoughts

For a movie that seemingly exists only to show off some fine female figures, the thing's an amazingly awful tease, too. The thing's rated R, it has no screenplay, and it's laden with killer cuties, so where's the skin? Frankly the only thing that could have made this thing watchable is a boatload of bare boobies. I hate to sound like such a perv, but at least the old-school jiggle-flicks delivered on their promises. Cloud 9 is like a PG-13 version of Hardbodies ... and who the hell would want to watch that??