A sequel to Women in Trouble, this movie has just as much talk and even less action. If you loved the first film and thought Carla Gugino was the best thing in it, you will revel in this motion picture. If it wore you out with non-stop blather and thought Gugino was just one among many other members of the cast, well
you're probably not going to be watching Elektra Luxx in the first place. If you're unfamiliar with either movie, this is what you need to know.
Aside from a couple of butt shots, there is no real nudity in Elektra Luxx. There is a lot of dialog, and I mean A LOT, but the characters do very little. This is more like a radio drama than a film or even a stage play. Some of the dialog is quite clever and entertaining. Some of it isn't nearly as clever or entertaining as writer/director Sebastain Gutierrez believes. The sheer tonnage of words spoken here without accompanying plot will likely wear on you over time, something which only enhances the lackluster ending of this thing. There's a dream sequence which demonstrates that Gugino should avoid any roles that require singing and dancing and that Gutierrez has no future in music videos. And this movie continues to employ Gutierrez' graphic but rather sanitized presentation of sexual discussion. These characters say a lot of supposedly provocative things. With the juiceless way they say them, however, they might as well be talking about the weather or comparing lawn fertilizer.
This story is again about the several intersecting lives, though fewer in number and importance than Women in Trouble. Primarily, it's about ex-porn star Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino). She's pregnant with her dead, rock star boyfriend's baby and teaching a class on "How to act like a porn star in bed" at the local community center. She gets caught up in the personal drama of Cora (Marly Shelton), the stewardess who was having sex with Luxx' boyfriend on a plane when he died. There's also a private eye (Timothy Olyphant), a best selling author (Kathleen Quinlan) and a naked, jealous neighbor (Vincent Kartheiser) who orbit around Luxx. There are also more disconnected plot lines about a Latino sex blogger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and about two sex workers from the first movie (Adrianne Palicki and Emmanuelle Chriqui) taking a vacation together and resolving the relationship cliffhanger Gutierrez left them at in Women in Trouble.
Look, the acting here is enjoyable and the direction, while not terribly involving, is perfectly acceptable. The problem is that this film goes on and on and on with the same thing over and over and over. If you took the best scenes here and inserted them into a story where stuff actually happens in between, Elektra Luxx would have been pretty good. As it is, watching this is like taking a long car ride with someone who won't stop talking. No matter how intelligent and interesting they are at the beginning, after a certain point you just want them to shut the hell up.
This is in no way a poorly made film, though the plot is pretty sketchy. It is a movie that completely reasonable people will find intolerable. Only those who were captivated by Gugino in Women in Trouble should bother with it.
Aside from a couple of butt shots, there is no real nudity in Elektra Luxx. There is a lot of dialog, and I mean A LOT, but the characters do very little. This is more like a radio drama than a film or even a stage play. Some of the dialog is quite clever and entertaining. Some of it isn't nearly as clever or entertaining as writer/director Sebastain Gutierrez believes. The sheer tonnage of words spoken here without accompanying plot will likely wear on you over time, something which only enhances the lackluster ending of this thing. There's a dream sequence which demonstrates that Gugino should avoid any roles that require singing and dancing and that Gutierrez has no future in music videos. And this movie continues to employ Gutierrez' graphic but rather sanitized presentation of sexual discussion. These characters say a lot of supposedly provocative things. With the juiceless way they say them, however, they might as well be talking about the weather or comparing lawn fertilizer.
This story is again about the several intersecting lives, though fewer in number and importance than Women in Trouble. Primarily, it's about ex-porn star Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino). She's pregnant with her dead, rock star boyfriend's baby and teaching a class on "How to act like a porn star in bed" at the local community center. She gets caught up in the personal drama of Cora (Marly Shelton), the stewardess who was having sex with Luxx' boyfriend on a plane when he died. There's also a private eye (Timothy Olyphant), a best selling author (Kathleen Quinlan) and a naked, jealous neighbor (Vincent Kartheiser) who orbit around Luxx. There are also more disconnected plot lines about a Latino sex blogger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and about two sex workers from the first movie (Adrianne Palicki and Emmanuelle Chriqui) taking a vacation together and resolving the relationship cliffhanger Gutierrez left them at in Women in Trouble.
Look, the acting here is enjoyable and the direction, while not terribly involving, is perfectly acceptable. The problem is that this film goes on and on and on with the same thing over and over and over. If you took the best scenes here and inserted them into a story where stuff actually happens in between, Elektra Luxx would have been pretty good. As it is, watching this is like taking a long car ride with someone who won't stop talking. No matter how intelligent and interesting they are at the beginning, after a certain point you just want them to shut the hell up.
This is in no way a poorly made film, though the plot is pretty sketchy. It is a movie that completely reasonable people will find intolerable. Only those who were captivated by Gugino in Women in Trouble should bother with it.