Shayla's Web Review

Reviewed by DeathIncarnate  on  2/3/2001

Directed by Michael Ninn

Production Date : 12 / 99

Running Time : 94 Minutes

Starring : Shayla LaVeaux, Alexandra Nice, Keri Windsor, Jessica Drake, Brooke Lane... Erik Everhard, Alec Metro, Mickey G, Randy Spears...

Review :

First off, what I like about Michael Ninn's movies :

-Great art direction, lighting, editing, and especially music (that always fits the scene)
-Beautiful women
-Sex that is nasty but well filmed, and often in extravagant settings

His videos are much better than the usual porn fodder and at least try to aspire to mainstram standards.. for the record, DARK GARDEN was one of the best movies of last year, combining a decent plot with great style and sex.

Since '98 his movies were always centered on one girl (usually a VCA contract star) around who the scenes unfolded along a common theme (eg. the desert in FADE TO BLUE or the early 60s in the great CASHMERE), and this time we get of course Shayla, one of the nicest women in the industry.

Yet, the movie was a relatively big disappointment for me :
I didn't think it was much better than the silly BLUE MATRIX which it oddly resembles, there was almost no story (what is there is interesting but not developed in any way) and the movie was obviously realised under time and budget constraints uncommon for Ninn features (it looks like it was shot in 2 days actually). There are 2 or 3 sets that are always repeated, the shot-on-video look doesn't match the class of Barry Wood's usual work and even the music is sometimes lifted from earlier Ninn work (some tracks are from DARK GARDEN)... this is almost standard porn, wack-off material! Not that there's something so wrong with that (it's rather well-done anyway) and the sex is hot and plentiful but I expected something more. It's as if Spielberg would do a TV movie-of-the- week.

There are 7 sex scenes in all, with 2 more masturbation segments.. Shayla is in 3 scenes and receives 2 facials.. in fact except the all-girl threeway (of course) almost every scene ends with a great facial cumshot, with he camera lingering on the action for several minutes (!) I always liked girls playing with cum (if it's not forced) and there's definitely enough of that here. Anal sex is prevalent also with a lot of rear-end penetration including a DP.. those segments are well-shot in a way not to make them look too nasty so that's okay then..

A look at the women :
-Jessica Drake is da bomb! I liked her in DREAM QUEST where she didn't get to have sex except a blowjob but here she gets it on pretty well... a problem with the scenes is that Ninn prefers his sex to be a bit too artificial with the women looking into the camera and all.. this comes off as neither really artistic (it is pure hardcore sex after all, not Andrew Blake) nor totally hot and leaves me a bit bored.
-Mia Smiles comes off as quite the cum lover here, playing around for 3 minutes with the love juice of partner Randy Spears, but she's an unbelievable screamer.. turn your sound down low, people!
-Shayla is of course great and totally ravenous while sweet at the same time..
-Alex Nice is very cool, she's extremely beautiful (look at that face, that body!) but hot nonetheless, her scene with Devin Wolfe isn't great but her looks almost make up for it, and the cumshot on the black floor is funny. She's actually in 2 scenes (including the g/g with Keri Windsor and Shayla)
-I didn't like Brooke Lane, she's too butch for me.. but rather hot sexually. I don't like scenes with several guys so I did tend to fast-forward through her scene here.

A word about the cool setting for the g/g scene : the whole scene is filmed through a gold filter with 2 women sitting in a sort of half-light while Shayla masturbates.. we then see the other women masturbating before they come out of the darkness and get down and dirty with Ms. LaVeaux. The late part of the scene (toys) wasn't my cup of tea but I liked the visual elements of shadow and light in the first half.

Oh yeah, the 'plot' (almost forgot about it) : Mickey G seems to be an internet freak who develops an obession with internet porn star Shayla LaVeaux, who is herself under control of Randy Spears (some sort of lord of the 'net or whatever) and that's about it, the sex scenes have no real sense for the most part, there is no climax to the story, and I don't like that. I'd rather have sopme background on the people who have sex, or some meaning to the act itself. DARK GARDEN was much better in that respect and even RITUAL had symbolic meaning,a certain suspense to be found throughout the film.

The DVD :

VCA promised us a rose garden with this DVD and even in that respect I was slightly disappointed :

-Photo gallery, mini-biographies with jump-to- scene etc. are well-known by now
-The scene selection menu was nice enough with possibility to jump to all the different acts in the scene (oral, anal etc.)
-The audio commentary was again not by the director but with Shayla (who comes off as really nice) and D3.. actually this was a pretty good commentary but not in the same league as some other tracks
-Trailers are boring (since when is the credit sequence of a movie considered as the trailer?)
-The behind-the scenes segment offers nothing more than a few uninformative interviews.. only Keri Windsor comes off as rather intersting. There is almost no footage on the shoot itself!
-The Ninn and Shayla interviews are okay, with Shayla's being a bit more alive
-The internet options don't even work.. you're supposed to get to some bonus scenes through Ninn's internet site but it doesn't seem to work (yet?) and frankly I didn't care that much...
-Audio and video are mostly very good but with jagged edges around some clean surfaces and some audio mixing problems, esp. during the commentary
-Multiple angles are the usual crap, though at least the scenes were not cut up

All in all, the extras package can't compare with the big Wicked releases even though it's not bad, I don't fell compelled to watch the supplements more than once. VCA did an above average job on this one, but the movie is just not very good, and I can't recommend it that much. It's okay, it's better than a lot of the crap titles out there, but I'd rather stick with the older Ninn titles, thank you very much..