Justine - In the Heat of Passion was produced in 2006 and is one movie of a multipart
series following the adventures of Justine, a student at the Topacre Academy for gifted
young girls. Gifted here
may not mean what you think - the speeches that we do hear from
the girls indicate that Topacres values cup sizes over IQ, which presumably makes entry
exams a doddle. Justine is in love with Professor Robson, and is dragged off with him on
Indiana Jones type adventures all over the world, usually a search for some sort of ancient powerful artifact,
with the requisite bad guys in attendance. Justine, a virgin, always escapes from capture
without actually doing the nasty with anyone, although she frequently watches other people
getting it on while tied up. For this reason, the movie is popular with
bondage fetishists.
With the description out of the way, one must ask: Is it any good? Well... No. Porn is not
held to quite the high standards as one might find at an Oscar awards ceremony, but this
movie fails even with such basic items as dialogue. The acting is wooden and stilted, the
German accents are truly cringe-worthy, and the plot -
Call me old fashioned, but I expect a plot to make sense. I can
forgive the odd little loophole, and even a deus ex machina, although using one more than
once is a little lazy. Justine has a plot, but it has one flaw - it makes no sense. I'm not
talking a "Wookies on Endor" lack of sense, I'm talking "12 700 000 hits when you Google "Tom Cruise
baby"" lack of sense.
We shift, with little to no interlude, from Egypt to the Antarctic,
with a scene in-between of Ra (wearing a massive golden mask) shagging on an altar, while
both the good guys and the bad guys stand and watch with absolutely no reaction on their
faces. Maybe it's just me, but if I was watching the Egyptian Sun God getting it on with
some girl tied to an altar, I'm pretty sure I'd be registering some sort of "Oh shit it's
the Egyptian Sun God getting it on with some girl tied to an altar" expression on my face.
Also, iceowl was clearly wrong about how cold it gets in the Antarctic, because very few
people actually wear warm clothes there, preferring to wear less clothing, if that's
possible, than they were wearing in Egypt.
The acting... oh dear God the acting. I have a great job, and I still wake up some mornings
thinking "Ho hum, another day at work". Presumably the same applies in the porn industry,
because quite frankly the actors in "Team America" showed more emotional range and they
were puppets. This includes the sex scenes, which were about as erotic as a documentary about gardening. At one point in the movie, Justine is captured and ridiculed for being a virgin. Then, to show her what she is missing, the bad guy and the bad girl (you can tell they're bad by the terrible German accents) have sex - behind her. That's stupid enough, but the scene is so dispassionate that I actually found myself seeing the point of this whole virginity thing. Luckily, I managed to snap out of it with the help of a few drinks.
There are one or two good things about this movie. Justine and the majority of the other actresses are really good looking, and there's not a botched boob-job scar to be seen. The movie does try hard for an adventure-type feel, and is let down more by the poor acting and low budget than lack of effort. The movie does feature quite a lot of light bondage, so if that flicks your switch, then you may want to give it a go.
In summary, I'd have to say that while the director clearly cared deeply about this movie, he was let down by one unfortunate point. It's porn. Serious attempts have been made to merge porn and serious drama before, and the results are... not good. A more deprecating view might have worked - porn and humour are close enough already that a merger could well be to the benefit of both, in a "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" kind of way. As it is, Justine is not something I could seriously recommend either as cheesily bad porn or as porn worth watching because it's porn. Perhaps the other movies in the series are better - but I'd recommend steering clear of this one.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Justine
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1106027-in_the_heat_of_passion/about.php
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005B1ZY/sr=8-1/qid=1154411908/ref=sr_1_1/102-7447458-3311338?ie=UTF8
My own drunken experience.