Basically Becca Review

Reviewed by Nat Hocken  on  6/1/2003

Juli Ashton’s “Basically Becca,” tries very hard to be entertaining. Not entertaining in a porno way; entertaining in a regular movie way. I think Juli wants us all to grab a date, nuke a bag of popcorn, and settle down on the sofa for an evening of fun. Sure, it’s crazy, but I can’t explain a movie that attempts to be informative, humorous, and erotic—sometimes all at the same time—any other way. It’s popcorn porn, and it’s weird as hell.

Juli begins in an educational vein. After introducing us to amateur webcam girl Becca, Juli asks Becca to give us a taste of her internet offerings. Becca obliges by masturbating with a vibrator in a chair in front of a full-length mirror while Juli watches from the bed. Except that Juli doesn’t just watch, she interjects a few questions somewhere in the middle of the show. Why? Because the sex isn’t important, the webcam experience is—which is also why Becca’s performance tails off shortly thereafter without an orgasm.

The internet experience is fully explored—that is, exploited—in this movie. Renee, whose website legstacy.com caters to the fetish crowd, shows up in a dull solo performance that abruptly shifts to a couples scene when Juli cuts to Renee being eaten out by her fiancé. Fellow netizens Nikki and Bryan work a short scene in which Nikki blows Bryan, a video virgin, until he cums; it doesn’t take long. And Kira Reed and her husband Dan, proprietors and stars of marriedcouple.com, make an appearance during which Kira tells us our women will give us better blowjobs if we give them good head. Point taken, but where’s the lesson in how to get them to let us cum on their faces? (This isn’t the internet for dummies, it’s the internet for dummies who’ve spent the last fifteen years holed up in a bomb shelter. Hey, Juli—the Cold War’s over, too.)

Humor gets its due in a couple of ridiculous scenes, one of which has a spectacularly unattractive Devinn Lane bouncing her boobs while dressed in a raincoat with the hood tightly strapped around her face and head. The other is of two girls (Sweet Georgia and Erica) masturbating in different locations while a DUELING BANJOS ripoff plays on the soundtrack. The performances are intercut on practically every note, and if you’re familiar with the tune, you can imagine the speed with which the images race by. Porn may need to lighten up at times, but when humor comes at the expense of sex, it isn’t porn anymore.

Wendy Divine and her husband Eric get to play their scene together—in the backseat and on the trunk of a car—more or less straight. They’re the first to put the corn aside and get to the porn. Barb and Mark, at Hedonism III in Jamaica, are next—that is, if watching an older couple have hardcore sex on a sofa while Becca masturbates on the floor nearby qualifies as straight porn. I felt as though I’d mistakenly slipped into the wrong niche.

The last scene is the one I suppose Juli was most looking forward to: the chance to give Becca a quick education in video porn. And she pulls out all the stops. Becca winds up suspended from the ceiling in one of those sex swings while Juli gives it to her with a double-penetrating strap-on in what is purportedly Becca’s first anal experience. What may look great in our imagination, however, doesn’t necessarily translate to video: from certain angles the straps of the sex swing are always in the way and watching Becca hanging there with no support for her head is exhausting. Worse, the between-the-legs camera angles are so poor that the double-penetrating nature of the toy is all but lost. And no matter which way you turn your head, it doesn’t get any clearer—I know because I tried it.

“Basically Becca” has one thing going for it. The bonus materials include a lesbian scene with novice Kristal Summers and old-pro Lola. Kristal’s nervousness is evident in her interview with Juli before the scene, but as sometimes happens, once the sex starts she heats up in a hurry, easily holding her own during the oral segments. It isn’t a great scene and it ends abruptly, but it is a genuine bit of porn and that’s a rarity on this disc.