My Virtual Shayla Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  5/27/2004

The Little Details

Running Time: 67 min.

Production Date: 10 / 9 / 2003

Director: None credited

Cast: Shayla LaVeaux

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: I haven’t been too impressed with this series. Shayla normally does a great job, but I’m expecting the job here to drag her down a bit.

Initial Reaction: Shayla does an excellent job but as a virtual release this one is extremely lacking and doesn’t come close to delivering what the cover claims it will.

Who Should Watch It : Fans of Shayla LaVeaux

Who Should Avoid It: Fans of virtual sex simulators and anybody who wants what the cover advertises

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: The technical aspects are pretty good. The audio is pretty clear and well balanced, but there are a few minor blemishes and background noises throughout the feature. The video is also pretty good. It has a hint of grain and is nicely lit, but many times it feels like somebody was trying to shoot for a full screen aspect ratio so things got cut off (such as Shayla’s head) fairly frequently.

Music: None

False Advertising: The cover claims multi-angle, Point of View (POV), Extreme Interactive, and Personal Lap Dance among other things. In order to handle this properly, I’m going to have to channel Penn & Teller for a little bit, such as this entire section of the review. I’ll play the Penn role, and thankfully Teller is right here with me to play his part. I’m sure you’ll be able to know which words are his if you read this aloud and do the appropriate voice to go with it. The claim of Multi-angle is bullshit. Okay, technically it’s true because the editor put together footage from a few different cameras so things weren’t just shot from a tri-pod. It qualifies as bullshit here because most people take Multi-angle to mean that the DVD technology is used to give you a choice of viewing angles while watching the DVD, which doesn’t happen here. If this were true, 99% of DVDs released could advertise being Multi-angle, including VHS releases. The Point of View advertisement works right into this. Yes, there’s POV footage here, but it’s just part of the feature and you have no control over whether you’re watching POV action or action from a different angle. The Personal Lap Dance advertisement is an even bigger pile of steaming bullshit than the Multi-angle claim. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the DVD. This brings us to the Extremely Interactive claim. Guess what? It’s another bullshit claim. There’s nothing extremely interactive about this DVD. Digital Playground, Digital Sin / New Sensations, and Smash Pictures have all put out some very nice and very interactive virtual sex simulators, all of which I’d call extremely interactive. You can adjust the viewing angle, you can often adjust the mood of the performer, and in some cases, you can even adjust the speed of the toys “you” work on the chosen girl with. These are Extremely Interactive DVDs. There’s nothing like that here. Here you basically just have a glorified chapter menu wrapped around a non-anamorphic widescreen presentation. When you choose a segment, it doesn’t even loop here! Claims like this, which appear to be extremely consistent on Anarchy Films’ Virtual Sex releases make it hard to not think of them as a bunch of motherfuckers who are trying to rip off anybody they can. For my last act of channeling Penn Gillette, I’m making a full point disappear from the overall score on this DVD due to how blatantly misleading so much of the cover is.

Menus: The menus are extremely simple. They all include the same still and just have the choices change next to it. The still is a smoking picture of Shayla, but in the end the menus just come across as lazy.

The Feature

My Virtual Shayla lets you visualize a little personal attention with Shayla “Gumdrop” LaVeaux. Shayla’s been around quite a few years, but still has a very tight body, cute look, and a trash talking mouth that few can compete with. She also knows how to work around a camera, which should make her a perfect candidate for a virtual sex feature.

Shayla starts things out with a bit of foreplay. She strips down, works herself over with a dildo in a couple positions, as well as working herself over with her fingers and playing with her tits. Shayla even lets you play with her pussy and a nice tease is thrown in before Shayla moves on with the sex. She starts off sucking cock, showing just why it’s called a hummer while giving it a complete oral workout, before moving on to getting fucked. Shayla takes it in both cowgirls, as well as missionary and doggie style. Finally she finishes things up taking two pops, the first being a great facial, and the second being a nice pop on Shayla’s stomach.

Not surprisingly, Shayla does a fantastic job. She puts plenty of energy and enthusiasm into the scene and plays to the camera extremely well, which turns the blowjob into one of the best I’ve seen in a heck of a long time. She adds plenty of trash talking into the action and directs most of it at you to help with the virtual feel of the action. Virtually everything Shayla does here is great, and she shows that she was an excellent pick for this release.

One of the biggest problems in the past with virtual DVDs has been the pop shots. Some studios have used real pops while others have went with faked wet pops or computerized pops. Thankfully Anarchy has went with the real pops here, and they work quite nice. Shayla handles them both very nicely, but the facial is what really shines here. Shayla takes her spunk shower with plenty of spunk herself, and the guy puts out enough for her to really do something with. The facial really makes for a nice end to the scene, and the secondary pop almost seems wasted because of it.

The biggest problem with My Virtual Shayla is the same as it is with all of Anarchy’s virtual sex DVDs, the mechanism. The way the DVD works, the action is presented in a non-anamorphic widescreen while the choices surround it in the black bars above and below the action. The segments then run just like it’s a normal movie where somebody wasn’t sure how to edit things too well. If the movie was lengthened by about two minutes this would have made a great standard scene. As is, the choices for the action just seem like a different type of chapter menu that you can access all the time. There’s nothing really special about it and the authoring as a whole lacks. Normally with a virtual feature the girl does what you want her to. If you want to watch her suck cock, you just select the blowjob choice and leave it run. The action loops back so that until you tell the girl to do something else she doesn’t do anything else. Here the action advances through the choices automatically. This would be nice as an option with the flow of the feature here, but to make it the only choice really brings down the feature as a whole.

The feeling of one big scene continues with the camera angles. I guess this is where the multiple angles cover claim comes in because you normally get two or three different angles edited together per segment. There’s POV shots, distance shots, and side views of the action, and they normally come together to make for a well balanced segment.

In the end, My Virtual Shayla is a disappointing release that had the potential to be a ball draining kick ass movie. Shayla is amazing in every segment, and makes the entire movie work. Yeah, there’s a couple teases that don’t come out that I would have liked, such as anal and titty fucking, but what’s here Shayla does extremely well with plenty of energy and trash talking. Sadly, although the camera work is nicely done, it’s almost completely wrong for this feature and often gives it a wrong type of feel. The even bigger problem is the virtual mechanism, which is just slightly more advanced than Tinker Toys. Although Shayla LaVeaux does an amazing job here, if you’re a virtual sex fan this is a release to avoid. If you have to see My Virtual Shayla, make sure you rent it before shelling out the big bucks.

The Extra Stuff

Trailers are included for many other Anarchy releases. The photo gallery contains about twenty nice looking snapshots and varying quality full screen photos. There’s also weblinks, commercials, and a bonus scene.

Bonus Scene - Rebecca Lords, a girl, and a guy

Rebecca and the girl start the scene off kissing a little before talking with the guy. They take turns working on the guy’s meatsicle, sucking and stroking it. They team up on it a little too before they share a facial.

This is a pretty good oral scene. Unlike most of Anarchy’s POV scenes, this one is actually a POV scene. The girls work well together, and the only thing that holds the scene back is the lackluster editing. You hear plenty of comments from other people around the scene and it just has a sloppy and amateurish feel (not to be confused with an amateur feel). As an oral scene goes this one’s pretty good, but it still has plenty of faults.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Straight, virtual sex, tease, masturbation, spanking, and toys

Raincoat Factor: Very high

Condom Usage: None

The Bottom Line:

Currently, many episodes in Anarchy’s My Virtual series can be found online for between about $10 and $20 with many stores offering them for around $15. If you’re an extreme fan of Shayla you’ll probably be happy here, just don’t go in expecting what the cover tells you. Shayla does an amazing job but the virtual aspect leaves more than a little to be desired. The technical aspects are pretty good, and there’s even a little effort towards the extras.

Note to Anarchy: With a little work and a lot more honesty this could have been a very nice release.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight