Heaven Or Vegas

That shot at the beginning? That's definitely Vegas.

RATINGS:
Screen Time: (3)- In what universe can you call this "starring"?
Woundage: (2)- nothing too terrible happens to him, but that extra torture thingy comes from the fact that he actually had to play this role.
Aesthetics: (5)- that first scene showed promise. The rest was kind of disappointing.

Before I begin, I would just like to know one thing. Why on Earth does my Blockbuster stock 15 copies of this movie? Is the fact that Yasmine Bleeth is in it enough to excuse the swiss cheese plot and mediocre acting? Are there men out there who are so eager to see Yasmine dance provocatively that a demand for this film has been created? Because frankly, that's the only reason I can see for people to rent this film. Geoffrey Blake sure as hell doesn't dance provocatively. I, for one, was disappointed.

This film follows Navy, a gigolo in Las Vegas who's tired of having sex for a living, and Rachel, a prostitute who's tired of having sex for a living but who also has the added attraction of being dumber than toast. Anyway, Navy rescues Rachel from her evil pimp and Rachel takes this to mean that they're going to be together forever. If you ask me, she's a little too clingy. But Navy realizes that if he does not take her with him, she'll probably starve to death because she's too stupid to find food on her own. So he quite literally picks her up and tells her he's going to Montana.

"Wow!" says Rachel. "We're going to Missouri!"
"No, we're going to Montana," says Navy.
"Wow! We're going to Montana!" says Rachel.

Anyway, they don't quite make it to Montana yet. Rachel forgot to tell Navy that she has a family in Utah. Her father is a militant Mormon who lives in a perfect little household with his perfect blond wife and her perfect blond daughters (one of which is the very annoying chick from Patch Adams). So Rachel and Navy pay a visit and decide to stay awhile since someone seems to have removed the ignition from Navy's groovy white sports car. Everyone thinks Navy is really cool, especially Annoying Patch Adams Chick, who tells her wholesome Mormon friends that she thinks he's hot. (Evidently without knowing the implications of labeling someone as such.) Well, Rachel goes and spends some quality time with her incredibly good-looking, charming, and all-around wonderful brother Billy (played by, of course, our Geoffrey), who does not spend a lot of time with their militant Mormon father either due to the fact that Billy got a girl pregnant and lives in a trailer on the 'other side of town'. Sounds sinister. They hang out in a bar and do shots. Billy tells Rachel that everyone in town knows that Rachel's a prostitute. Rachel does a shot. We see Billy three times in this movie. Two of those times involve doing shots.

Well, people may know what Rachel does, but nobody seems to know what Navy does until Navy's pimp (pimpette?) shows up looking for her car. But Navy doesn't want to be a gigolo anymore, so he tells her she can keep the car, he wants to stay in Utah. But she leaves, saying the car's all his, because like him, it's replaceable. (I guess life really does go on without him.) After that, Annoying Patch Adams Chick decides he's not all that hot. Everyone else just sits there in stunned silence.

Anyway, Rachel is very childish, and later on we see that her immaturity and tendency to make bad decisions comes with the childhood trauma of witnessing her mother's suicide as a young girl. So she makes another bad decision, and winds up going off with some weird cult from which Navy must rescue her. Navy does not go by himself. He takes Billy along, who just happens to be hanging out on his father's front porch. This is the biggest hole in the plot. I thought Billy's father disapproved of him. So why is Billy just randomly hanging out there? Not that I mind, but this really bothered me.

In general, I felt like Billy had the potential to be an extremely complex character and a great addition to the plot, but once again, Geoffrey gets the shaft. Think about this. Billy also witnessed his mother's suicide. Look what it did to Rachel. She retreated into this fantasy world full of white knights and handsome princes while using her physical body as means to an end. How are Billy's reactions similar and different? And how did he achieve the apparent redemption that he achieved near the end of the film? The film never answers what I feel are two very crucial questions. Geoffrey did his best with the lines he had, but think about what the screenwriter could have done with this character and didn't.

There is much more to this movie, including the wholesome Mormon younger sister and the white knight/Oz imagery, but that's it in a nutshell. In the end Rachel and Navy do end up in Montana, living in a log cabin and getting their Christmas card picture taken with their two small children of indeterminate gender. And to this I say: never once have I known anyone who lived like that in Montana. Has anyone in Hollywood ever actually been to Montana? Montanans are just like everyone else, barring our tendency to write long-winded manifestos about everything that annoys us.

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