If the parts played by Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara featured instead, say, Kathy Bates and Imelda Staunton, then there might be some way of taking this film seriously. As it is, no way! We're expected to believe that Stone and Vergara would a) need to pay some guy to have a threesome with them, b) that Stone, playing a Dermatologist, would arrange such a tryst through an elderly client, c) that they'd settle on John Turturro as their ideal man, d) they'd pay him $1000 apiece. If it's not already obvious from that set-up, Fading Gigolo is pretty much a Turturro homage to Woody Allen. Beyond being set in a world where sexy women chase after nebbish guys, the humour, the tone, even the soundtrack is all typical Woody. So it's hardly surprising that Woody is there as the pimp, virtually performing an homage to himself. It's all beyond strange.
Review of Fading Gigolo
