Confessions of a Lap Dancer

 (1997)

So many things you do not want to see as you travel through this life, for they are warnings of bad things to come.  An umpire walking to home plate with the help of a seeing-eye dog.  That would be bad.  Dr. Kevorkian sent to tell you the results of your biopsy.  That would be worse.  A movie - any movie - with a first scene in which a woman - any woman - is crying. Worst of all possibilites, that one.  Tells you there is viewing pain ahead. It violates the one rule we have in the house about which movies to rent or buy: I will not watch a movie that does or even could star Hugh Grant.  Don't care what the title of the movie is, if a gal be crying in the first scene, Hugh Grant cannot be far behind.  Despite failing this litmus test, Confessions of a Lap Dancer has two saving graces: Hugh Grant is nowhere to be seen and barely a minute goes by without one, two or all three B's out there in the open, for us to enjoy. 

The movie's protagonist and title character - the Lap Dancer, not the Confessions - is played by Blake Pickett.  Ms. Pickett had quite the career.  Once a video DJ on the Nashville Network, or some such thing, and then a beauty in B movies who kept her clothes on, all the more to be desired, Blake wandered into this mess of a movie because, well I suppose because she had bills to pay.  Time was I capped a movie of hers in which she stripped down to a bikini.  And how I wished at the time she had shed a lot more clothing.  Had red hair then and she looked wonderful.  In Confessions she has bleach blonde hair - independent evidence of its unnatural color is given us several times in the movie - and although her body looks remarkably well toned her face looks like the years have worn her down.  But does she ever give up the goodies.  I counted 12 scenes in which she either strips or sport humps.  If you like her looks and can think of nothing better than to see Blake Pickett naked, brother, then you have come to the right place.

The movie itself blows.  Giant green weenies.  Blake's character is a stripper, lap dancer and hooker, all rolled up into one neat package.  Back story is she wants her daughter back from some older, respectable guy but because she's been arrested and jailed for solicitation the odds of that are ever so slim.  There is one meager, contrived attempt to explain her hooking.  You see, she has a preternatural desire to defy convention and live wildly.  You know that because in exactly one scene, immediately after her friend has offered that theory, she boosts a car and goes for a joyride. End of exposition, end of backstory, end of interest... on anybody's part, including the scriptwriter.  We do learn repeatedly that Blake is an unhappy camper.  Does not like her day job.  Every time she hooks up with someone she cries, discreetly enough so that the John or the Jane cannot see her, which is a good thing for business because most of us would rather not  have our sex partners weep through a session of heated boffing. 

Her lawyer decides he loves her and dips his dingus into a honeypot that should be drained dry by now, and you know she loves him because she smiles during intercourse - whoda thunk?  But then she meets his best friend and it turns out to be one of her johns and yada, yada, yada.  Who the fuck cares?  Another story winds its way through the movie - something about the strip joint's bookkeeper, whose cop ex-boyfriend wants her back or something.  In the end, almost as if by magic, all stories get resolved all happy and neat, in a way that tells me this script had to have been written by a girl.  Not a woman, a girl.  Even if the writer sported a Y chromosome and external genitalia, he is still a girl.  Confessions is really a chick flick with all the sensibilities of a Hugh Grant film, but with lots and lots of nekkidness.

Blake and a whole lotta other women do get seriously nekkid.  Got the caps and clips to prove it.  You will see lots of stripping scenes, sometimes by named players - not just Blake but also Nikki Nova and Julia Kruis and Janine Lindemulder - and many times by a quartet of unidentified lap dancers who sit and wait politely while the main gals strip and then bounce up to wriggle around on some guy's lap.  Seems like awfully civilized behavior from a group of sex workers, but what do I know?  Director of this dreck has a style for filming the stripping scenes.  Too bad it is a piss poor style.  Use two cameras, he figures, and set em up at the back of the room and to make it seem as though this really is a strip club have people walk between the camera and the subject as often as possible.  Yep, that sure convinced me.  And there were many sport humping scenes.  Blake does a handful of guys and one gal, played by Lisa Comshaw. 

That scene is a hoot, BTW. Lisa has her arms out, crucifixion style, and is blindfolded - so she thinks Blake is her hubby as she canoodles with her naughty bits, but as soon as the blindfold comes off, Lisa's hands are shown to be free as birds.  Just the way it goes in Confessions of a Lap Dancer.  People who made this thing could not be bothered to worry about stuff like... I don't know, logic, consistency, continuity... that sort of stuff. 

So okay, wasn't supposed to be Kagemusha, this movie.  And I do so appreciate the fact the producers went out and got Blake to take off all her clothes every five minutes, but crimony they were this close to having a movie that might have worked at some level above the pudendum.  Sadly, it was not be, mon cherie.

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