What’s the saying? “He was a man ahead of his time.” Or, “She should have been born in a different century.”
Such is the case with the movie Lucky Bastard, which will have a short theater run and probably some life on DVD, VOD, and cable. It’s a found footage movie about a porn shoot in which all the participants are murdered. By piecing together video and film footage found at the scene of the crime we discover how it all unfolded.
Lucky Bastard
Someone forgot to tell the producers that found footage was hot five years ago but has now been relegated to the cinema’s closet. I wrote a review of the found footage film Evidence last year, and I noted how this movie, too, though intriguing at times, was past its use-by date.
Yet here we are again with another found footage movie, this one combining thriller aspects with porn and porn humor. It’s one of those movies that sound good in the pitch session but turn out dull and trite.
Lucky Bastard is well made and well-acted, with a slew of veteran film and TV players (the most notable actor is the guy who challenged Jerry Seinfeld to a race in one episode). It was probably done on a shoestring budget but the filmmakers and performers are not amateurs. There’s enough T and A to give it a rating of NC-17, but it’s not a porno.
The movie is a one-note story about a porn fan who’s chosen to be the “lucky bastard” who gets to sleep with one of the hottest women in the industry. About the rest of the story, I’ll only say that things don’t turn out as planned and the situation turns deadly.
There’s just not much else to discuss. One could probably muster something about it being a comment on the industry and how women are used and portrayed. Or I could go on about post-modern attitudes regarding sex and celebrity. But that would be granting Lucky Bastard too much credibility.
I don’t think that much thought was put into this movie beyond “has anyone done a found footage porn movie”? In my review of Evidence I detailed how the found footage genre began with The Blair Witch Project and then ebbed for a while only to come roaring back between 2005-2010—only to die again shortly thereafter. Perhaps the makers of Lucky Bastard believe they can be on the forefront of the next wave. Though no one can ever predict what will sell and what will not, I think they’d have to come up with a more original story and more compelling characters to reignite the genre.
As it exists, Lucky Bastard is flat and pedestrian. I could conclude by offering porn-related cracks about how the movie leaves you hollow inside or how it’s about as deep as, well, you know…
If you are into schlock or the underground film scene, you might find something of interest here. Otherwise, you’d be quite correct in assuming this is a movie whose time has passed.
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