Meet Monica Velour

TedFlicks Rating:

$9.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $13.50

NOTE TO KIM CATTRALL:  WHEN IN DOUBT, PAD

“Meet Monica Velour” is a generally endearing trifle of a romantic-teen-coming-of-age comedy with just enough vulgarity to ensure its appeal to modern auds.  The vulgarity comes largely in the form of Brian Dennehy’s naked tush, a sight that should be avoided at all costs.  Otherwise helmer Keith Bearden’s feature debut errs a tad on the side of the ridiculous, but not so much as to put off auds.  At least it’s not “The Hangover”.

Dustin Ingram is a high-school senior named Tobe, a total geek who lives with grandfather “Pop Pop” (Dennehy) and has an obsession with 1970s porn star Monica Velour (Kim Cattrall), whose real name is Linda Romanoli, and genre films of the 1950s and 60s including Russ Meyer’s 1965 opus “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”.  The last is cute inside stuff for film buffs and critics, but one doubts that general auds will make much of it.  Toby’s job is selling hotdogs from his grandfather’s wiener-mobile, a panel truck topped by a giant hotdog.  It’s an ongoing sight gag.  Tobe also has a thing for high-school classmate Amanda (Jee Young Han) but lacks the guts to act on it.

Toby sets off on a voyage of discovery, which is where the coming-of-age part comes in.  The trip has a twofold purpose, selling the hotdog truck, which Pop Pop has given him as a graduation gift, and meeting Monica Velour.  Monica, unfortunately, at age 49, stripping in a seedy club, is not the sexpot she was in her 1970s pix, in clips of which Jamie Tisdale plays Monica.  Tobe, however, is enthralled.  Cattrall gained some weight for the role.  She need not have.  Makeup and costume departments can do anything.  As Shelley Winters advised long ago, “When in doubt, pad.”

Monica is booed off the stage for being over the hill.  Tobe gets sent to hospital having taken a beating by disagreeing with the hecklers.  That sort of breaks the ice between the pair.  She lives in a trailer park, has lost custody of her daughter to her creepy ex-husband, and is broke.  She hangs out with bikers, drinks too much, smokes too much, and does too many drugs.  Tobe sets out to be her protector and change her life — with predictable results.  Monica rebels.  Every man is the same:  They all want a woman to be their slave.  She tosses him.

Claude (Keith David), the pop artist who buys the hotdog truck for $5k in cash, emerges as the voice of wisdom — and sounds a lot like an avuncular James Earl Jones.  Armed with Claude’s wisdom, Tobe returns to his quest.  Monica softens a tad toward him and eventually teaches him the mysteries of love in a picnic scene punctuated by real fireworks.  It’s a nice touch.  She also gets pic’s best line — turned down for one “respectable” job after another due to her past, she says, “I swear to God — you screw a few hundred guys and the whole world turns against you!”  Monica needs the “respectable” job to regain custody of her daughter.  Thwarted at every turn, she returns to porno, doing a seedy shoot in a motel room only to be upstaged by the underage Tobe who sabotages the shoot by inviting the cops and giving her just enough time to beat it before they arrive and ask for the IDs of all concerned.  It’s a great plot twist, and it proves that Tobe has learned a little about being an adult and doing something (albeit a tad underhanded) to help someone else instead of to fulfill his own fantasy.  He makes it possible for Monica and her daughter to start their life together once again in another state without her porno past as baggage.  He then faces reality and gets moving.

Pic’s ending is entirely satisfactory — even the Hayes Office would have approved.  Without giving too much away — and there is so much — let the record show that Amanda is also a fan of Russ Meyer’s films.

Bearden (who also gets screenplay credit) may well have a future as a director if good nature does not a box office bomb make.  He knows his craft, sets up exposition with great economy — of both time and money — and moves the plot along with firmness.   He coaxes enormous range out of Cattrall and seems to work well with children.  Lensing by Masanobu Takayanagi – is more than up to par.  Naomi Geraghty’s work in the cutting room keeps pic down to a manageable 98 minutes.  And the soundtrack is nothing if not cute, beginning with “Can’t Stop Loving that Man of Mine” from the 1927 musical, “Showboat.”

Pic carries an R rating for sex, nudity, language, and drug use.  But except for Brian Dennehy’s tush, one almost fails to notice.

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