Traci Lords began her career in the movies as an underage porn star. I'm pretty sure she considered going back into that business while making this film, because nothing in the world of XXX could be more embarrassing or degrading than watching her stink her way through this turkey. Seriously, even doing porn with midgets and donkeys would be more ennobling than starring in Extramarital.
Elizabeth Barton (Traci Lords) is a woman who's left her career in corporate America to try and become a journalist, much to the chagrin of her husband Eric (Jack Kerrigan). He thinks she's just wasting her time while he has to pay all the bills. Elizabeth is working an internship at WE@R magazine, where her lordly editor Griffin (Jeff Fahey) is like a slicked back, heterosexual version of Tennessee Williams. The upcoming issue of the magazine is all about sex and Elizabeth is inspired to do a story about a woman she recently met on a plane trip that is having an affair. Anne (Maria Diaz) is perfectly happy to tell Elizabeth all about her adulterous liaisons with her lover Bob (Brian Bloom). But when Anne disappears, Elizabeth investigates and uncovers some shocking revelations. Well, the guy who wrote this crap thought they were shocking revelations. They're actually painfully obvious plot twists, stuff that doesn't really make any sense and exposition so clunky a character practically stares directly into the camera and slowly reads off a list of story details to the audience.
It's hard to know where to begin with this movie. The script is awful. It's a story about journalism and sex apparently written by a virgin who doesn't know what a journalist does or how they do it. The direction would be considered below average for an industrial training video. The dialog sounds like it was transcribed from an extended improv session by a troupe of deaf-mutes. The acting is massively uneven. Jeff Fahey is giving a rather stupid and silly performance, but he does it quite well. Brian Bloom as Bob and Natalie Karp as Lori, a friend of Elizabeth's the script manufactures to serve the Almighty Plot Hammer, are basically competent. Jack Kerrigan is terrible, however. He sports a shaggy pompadour hairdo that's a more talented thespian than he is. Maria Diaz is as stiff as a man whose Viagra-powered erection has lasted longer than 4 hours. And Traci Lords is good grief. She's like robot whose emotion chip is malfunctioning. She randomly slides from one expression to another, never finding the appropriate one for the moment. When she and Fahey are on screen together, it's like a scene from a David Mamet play featuring a man and a very smart chimp.
This allegedly erotic thriller is about 90 minutes long and has two sex scenes in it. In one, Diaz gets naked but you only see her nudity from the side or at an angle, as though director Yael Russcol was afraid to look directly at her because he'd be turned to stone. In the other, Lords is nude yet her nipples remain covered at all times. So unlike other low-rent garbage that gets run in the middle of the night on Cinemax, Extramarital doesn't even offer up a satisfying amount of skin. Oh, and in Diaz' sex scene, the guy she's with is wearing what looks like a spare Michael Myers mask from Halloween 4. That pretty much kills off any prurient interest you might have.
Extramarital's only value as a movie is as an object of mockery.
Elizabeth Barton (Traci Lords) is a woman who's left her career in corporate America to try and become a journalist, much to the chagrin of her husband Eric (Jack Kerrigan). He thinks she's just wasting her time while he has to pay all the bills. Elizabeth is working an internship at WE@R magazine, where her lordly editor Griffin (Jeff Fahey) is like a slicked back, heterosexual version of Tennessee Williams. The upcoming issue of the magazine is all about sex and Elizabeth is inspired to do a story about a woman she recently met on a plane trip that is having an affair. Anne (Maria Diaz) is perfectly happy to tell Elizabeth all about her adulterous liaisons with her lover Bob (Brian Bloom). But when Anne disappears, Elizabeth investigates and uncovers some shocking revelations. Well, the guy who wrote this crap thought they were shocking revelations. They're actually painfully obvious plot twists, stuff that doesn't really make any sense and exposition so clunky a character practically stares directly into the camera and slowly reads off a list of story details to the audience.
It's hard to know where to begin with this movie. The script is awful. It's a story about journalism and sex apparently written by a virgin who doesn't know what a journalist does or how they do it. The direction would be considered below average for an industrial training video. The dialog sounds like it was transcribed from an extended improv session by a troupe of deaf-mutes. The acting is massively uneven. Jeff Fahey is giving a rather stupid and silly performance, but he does it quite well. Brian Bloom as Bob and Natalie Karp as Lori, a friend of Elizabeth's the script manufactures to serve the Almighty Plot Hammer, are basically competent. Jack Kerrigan is terrible, however. He sports a shaggy pompadour hairdo that's a more talented thespian than he is. Maria Diaz is as stiff as a man whose Viagra-powered erection has lasted longer than 4 hours. And Traci Lords is good grief. She's like robot whose emotion chip is malfunctioning. She randomly slides from one expression to another, never finding the appropriate one for the moment. When she and Fahey are on screen together, it's like a scene from a David Mamet play featuring a man and a very smart chimp.
This allegedly erotic thriller is about 90 minutes long and has two sex scenes in it. In one, Diaz gets naked but you only see her nudity from the side or at an angle, as though director Yael Russcol was afraid to look directly at her because he'd be turned to stone. In the other, Lords is nude yet her nipples remain covered at all times. So unlike other low-rent garbage that gets run in the middle of the night on Cinemax, Extramarital doesn't even offer up a satisfying amount of skin. Oh, and in Diaz' sex scene, the guy she's with is wearing what looks like a spare Michael Myers mask from Halloween 4. That pretty much kills off any prurient interest you might have.
Extramarital's only value as a movie is as an object of mockery.