March 25, 2007
Good natured, rude and literate, I Want Candy is like The Forty Year Old Virgin with an A level in film studies. Two film students from Leatherhead, keen to make a kickoff demo film, find themselves making a porno pic featuring Candy Fiveways, a top adult star.
Passing themselves off as established director and producer, the lads shoehorn sex scenes into their script to appease the gangster-pornographer who’s the only guy who’ll lend them any dosh.
But with no cast, crew or location, our boys shoot the film at the director’s house while his parents are at work. Cue the inevitable in-one-door-out-the-other moments as the secret’s kept hid. And if shooting on a shoestring wasn’t bad enough, it’s worse when the gangster-lender comes calling.
Featuring The Office’s Mackenzie Crook as a goateed film lecturer, a fantastic Eddie Marsan as the gangland porno promoter, and Baywatch’s Carmen Electra as Ms Fiveways, I Want Candy brims with enough talent to keep this sparky film on track.
Certainly sexual, there’s limited nudity and while there’s gross-out stuff – premature posturing, ping pong balls propelled like a party trick – this is no American Pie. The Brit-spin here is that the lads aren’t in it for the sex. Films and filmmaking not flesh and fornication are the order of the day. Fellini not fellatio.
Candy and her director Baggy banter about films in a cute and clever scene that establishes Ms Fiveways as a real person not a nymphet. Casablanca, Spielberg and Ridley Scott all get a plug. Wittily scripted, with some zippy word-play, I Want Candy only sags when it veers too much toward farce.
But like The Forty Year Old Virgin, and The Full Monty before it, it’s soft-centred, not soft-focus. I Want Candy won’t be to everyone’s taste. But it’s still surprisingly sweet.
Passing themselves off as established director and producer, the lads shoehorn sex scenes into their script to appease the gangster-pornographer who’s the only guy who’ll lend them any dosh.
But with no cast, crew or location, our boys shoot the film at the director’s house while his parents are at work. Cue the inevitable in-one-door-out-the-other moments as the secret’s kept hid. And if shooting on a shoestring wasn’t bad enough, it’s worse when the gangster-lender comes calling.
Featuring The Office’s Mackenzie Crook as a goateed film lecturer, a fantastic Eddie Marsan as the gangland porno promoter, and Baywatch’s Carmen Electra as Ms Fiveways, I Want Candy brims with enough talent to keep this sparky film on track.
Certainly sexual, there’s limited nudity and while there’s gross-out stuff – premature posturing, ping pong balls propelled like a party trick – this is no American Pie. The Brit-spin here is that the lads aren’t in it for the sex. Films and filmmaking not flesh and fornication are the order of the day. Fellini not fellatio.
Candy and her director Baggy banter about films in a cute and clever scene that establishes Ms Fiveways as a real person not a nymphet. Casablanca, Spielberg and Ridley Scott all get a plug. Wittily scripted, with some zippy word-play, I Want Candy only sags when it veers too much toward farce.
But like The Forty Year Old Virgin, and The Full Monty before it, it’s soft-centred, not soft-focus. I Want Candy won’t be to everyone’s taste. But it’s still surprisingly sweet.