"Twenty Candles" is a disappointing title in David Stanley's filmography - emerging as just a trifle designed to keep Kira Kener fans fed back in her heyday at Vivid Video. His attempts at humor here are about all the content he musters, and generally fall flat.
Slim premise has to do with a young rock star played smugly by Devin Wolf, whose impulsive and egotistical behavior causes him to muff the wedding proposal to girlfriend Heather Lyn. Like other, far better, Stanley stories, fate and an entire lifetime is sort of telescoped into the 75 or so minute running time of the era, and that includes 5 lengthy XXX scenes!
But unlike a great work, such as Stanley's " " starring Raylene, our unlikable hero's story is uninteresting, and the lesson he sort of learns very trite. Sure, it was a mistake to blurt out a vulgar and insulting version of the corny "Will you marry me?" to Heather, but that's hardly the stuff that great scripts are made of.
So we see Devin, with his long blond locks and an androgynous appearance that oddly reminded me of a young Kirstie Alley (?!), hump Lyn, then their friend Chennin Blanc (whose boyfriend is crew member Clarke Irving, who often gets an acting role but always NonSex), but more importantly later on the nominal star of the movie, buxom Kira Kener.
The structure Stanley uses is routine and one he often employs - I most recently saw it in a far better movie he made nearly a decade later for Wicked called "Candelabra". After Lyn tosses away his engagement ring for good reason, we get a "Ten Years Later" card, and now down and out, back to his drinking ways, Wolf is agitated by his pesky neighbors' too loud lovemaking in the paper-thin-walls crummy building where he resides (Ian Daniels and Kener as the neighbors).
He visits and complains to Kener, only to find out that she's his biggest fan from a decade or so back, and giving to fainting spells (not as funny as Stanley intended) whenever she sees her fallen idol up close. He resists her, pretty far-fetched for the fans considering Kener's larger than life loveliness (and boobs) until of course they unite in the sack after she presents him with a birthday cake, this being his 30th birthday.
SPOILER:
Lame gimmick is that when the two of them wish as he blows out the candles, he is transported back to the faithful birthday party with Lyn, Irving and Blanc in attendance 10 years earlier, and this time he makes a proper proposal and Lyn accepts. This fantasy Mulligan is soon ended when she abruptly gets mad (it has to do with his blurting out information he shouldn't know about if not benefiting from 10 years hindsight) and Wolf wakes up back with Kener, unable to change his life-altering fate. Stanley cannot resist inserting his usual O. Henry surprise ending, which I found cynical and pat.
The standard porno cop-out that only the sex matters is one I don't believe in, though here Stanley would flunk even at that low bar, given that we don't get enough Kener action, and that Wolf and his relatively small dick (by porn standards) overstay their welcome.
Slim premise has to do with a young rock star played smugly by Devin Wolf, whose impulsive and egotistical behavior causes him to muff the wedding proposal to girlfriend Heather Lyn. Like other, far better, Stanley stories, fate and an entire lifetime is sort of telescoped into the 75 or so minute running time of the era, and that includes 5 lengthy XXX scenes!
But unlike a great work, such as Stanley's " " starring Raylene, our unlikable hero's story is uninteresting, and the lesson he sort of learns very trite. Sure, it was a mistake to blurt out a vulgar and insulting version of the corny "Will you marry me?" to Heather, but that's hardly the stuff that great scripts are made of.
So we see Devin, with his long blond locks and an androgynous appearance that oddly reminded me of a young Kirstie Alley (?!), hump Lyn, then their friend Chennin Blanc (whose boyfriend is crew member Clarke Irving, who often gets an acting role but always NonSex), but more importantly later on the nominal star of the movie, buxom Kira Kener.
The structure Stanley uses is routine and one he often employs - I most recently saw it in a far better movie he made nearly a decade later for Wicked called "Candelabra". After Lyn tosses away his engagement ring for good reason, we get a "Ten Years Later" card, and now down and out, back to his drinking ways, Wolf is agitated by his pesky neighbors' too loud lovemaking in the paper-thin-walls crummy building where he resides (Ian Daniels and Kener as the neighbors).
He visits and complains to Kener, only to find out that she's his biggest fan from a decade or so back, and giving to fainting spells (not as funny as Stanley intended) whenever she sees her fallen idol up close. He resists her, pretty far-fetched for the fans considering Kener's larger than life loveliness (and boobs) until of course they unite in the sack after she presents him with a birthday cake, this being his 30th birthday.
SPOILER:
Lame gimmick is that when the two of them wish as he blows out the candles, he is transported back to the faithful birthday party with Lyn, Irving and Blanc in attendance 10 years earlier, and this time he makes a proper proposal and Lyn accepts. This fantasy Mulligan is soon ended when she abruptly gets mad (it has to do with his blurting out information he shouldn't know about if not benefiting from 10 years hindsight) and Wolf wakes up back with Kener, unable to change his life-altering fate. Stanley cannot resist inserting his usual O. Henry surprise ending, which I found cynical and pat.
The standard porno cop-out that only the sex matters is one I don't believe in, though here Stanley would flunk even at that low bar, given that we don't get enough Kener action, and that Wolf and his relatively small dick (by porn standards) overstay their welcome.