"Electra Luxx" DVD Review - Written by Anthony T

Electra Luxx
Year: 2011
Directors: Sebastian Gutierrez
Stars: Carla Gugino, Marly Shelton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
MPAA Rating: R
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Running Time: 100 Mins

Film Synopsis:

“Electra Luxx is a spinoff film, from the very entertaining film “Women in Trouble” that was released last year. The film is about an pregnant ex-porn star, who is teaching sexology at a community college and looking to forward to bringing her baby into the world. Before that, she has to wrestle and deal with a bride to be (Marly Shelton) who wants her to seduce the man that she’s going to marry, a obsessed web adult journalist (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) , a private eye (Timothy Olyphant) that’s wants her ex-boyfriend’s missing lyrics and the Virgin Mary herself. “Electra Luxx” also co-stars Malin Akerman, Emmanuelle Chrioui, Adrianne Palicki, and Kathleen Quinlan.


Film Review:

Going into this film, I was expecting this to be more like “Women in Trouble”. In that film, I enjoyed the fact that you had various characters intersecting with each other’s plotline. It made the film very entertaining and fun to watch. I thought, I would be in for more of the same here. But sadly, it wasn’t the case with “Electra Luxx“. Don’t get me wrong this is a good film, but this was also disappointing.

Writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez does a good job saving his mediocre script, from being the film’s downfall. I liked how, he incorporates a lot of different styles in the way the film is presented. Guirierrez could have easily painted himself into a corner with his screenplay, but I like the fact that he uses different filming methods for a couple of scenes. His use of a webcam, for the scenes in Bert Rodriquez’s basement and super 8 film for Luxx’s flashback sequences did a good job giving the effects that were needed for those scenes and make it also madw it look different.

Also, I liked how the acting was good enough to keep my interest. Gutierrez does a good job getting the performances that were needed to cover up the flaws. I thought, Carla Cugino was very good again, as the title character, as she was funny and entertaining. But the person that stole this film for me was Joseph Gordon Levitt, as the eccentric and obsessed web streamer Bert Rodriguez. It was those performances that helped saved this film for me. If it wasn’t for that, then this could’ve been a different film.

The screenplay was a different story. It felt disjoined at times, as it felt I was watching three different short films. The main reason for that, the characters don’t cross each other’s path. What made “Women in Trouble” very good, you had interesting characters that intersected with other subplots. It doesn’t happen here, because each of the subplots felt like a separate short film. Don’t get me wrong, they were entertaining and would work as a series of short films. But when your reviewing a film, you look for the film’s subplots to make sense with the story. I was hoping that there would be more intersection with these characters to make things interesting. Sadly, there isn’t and that’s probably why I’m being so harsh about it.

Even though, the execution of the screenplay fell flat. I enjoyed the humor here. There were some funny scenes, like in Rodriguez’s basement and especially when Luxx is trapped in an elevator with a naked man. It helped ease some of my complaints, as I was enjoying watching this film. But at the end of the movie, I was still left with the feeling that this could’ve been a better film.

DVD Extras:

Not many features on this DVD. In fact, there were only two features here. Three deleted scenes that total Nineteen minutes and trailers for upcoming Sony Pictures Home Entertainment releases.

Final Summary

Even though this film was solid, it could’ve been better considering that I enjoyed “Women in Trouble” a lot. “Electra Luxx has enough funny moments to save this from becoming a total disaster.

Review Rating: 3 Stars

DVD Extras: 1 Star