AMATEUR NIGHT

US, 2016, 92 minutes, Colour.
Jason Biggs, Janet Montgomery, Ashley Tisdale, Bria L. Murphy, Jenny Mollen, Steven Weber.
Directed by Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse.

Here is another example of Hollywood sex comedies, the innocent types, the prostitutes and their work, the work of pimps, the raucous male clients.

No sooner is the audience thinking of Julia Roberts and Pretty Woman but that there are is a reference to that film – although this is a far more raunchy presentation of the themes.

The focus is on Jason Biggs. For more than 20 years, since his appearance in the first American Pie film, he has generally appeared on screen as the confused young man, eager to learn, but, in many ways, a loser. It is the same here. At the opening of the film, he is ranting on the phone about not getting a response to his job application – he is an architect. His wife is pregnant and financial benefits are about to run out. She is moody, he is on edge, he fears a possible breakup.

When his wife urges him to apply for a job, thinking that he is going to be a pizza delivery, he finds that the manager of the company is actually an organiser of appointments for a high-class prostitute. The architect picks her up, takes her to a respectable doctor and his mansion, wants to give up, but is persuaded by his wife to continue and to get the money. When he returns and breaks in, he thinks that the doctor is physically abusing the girl but she is in fact teaching him how to type S and M knots. He knocks the doctor out.

For most of the film, he is working with the prostitute and her two friends, going to a strip-sex appointment with some obnoxious macho male types. He reads the rules, the girls perform, there are lots of tips. In the middle of this he receives an anxious phone call from his wife thinking she is about to give birth – a false alarm. He returns from the hospital where he has been pursued by the angry doctor, holding a syringe – which, inevitably, goes into the doctor instead of the architect.

There is a further complication when another out of work architect steals all the money and everybody has to be searched.

The girls are very happy, he delivers them home, and is invited up to Nikki’s house, both he and the audience wondering what is going to happen – when she reveals that she owns a property, has saved all her money for 11 years, and commissions him to design a house for her.

Return home, money in hand, happy ending…