Review of Private Resort (1985) by Josh G — 13 Oct 2008

One thing about the movie Returner that seems to have struck many viewers is the fact that it is so obviously made up of bits and pieces stolen from other films, and yet it is difficult to be entirely hard on the movie because of it. Yeah, it's stealing things from The Terminator, and that's very obvious, but it still feels fun.

Private Resort feels kind of the same way to me. There are so many jokes that might as well have been ripped straight out of countless other teen sex comedies of the '80s, and there's so much physical comedy that plainly came from The Three Stooges... and yet it's hard to be entirely hard on the movie.

Okay, yes, it's a bad movie. It's a bad movie. Ben (Morrow) has to pretend that he's a barber, and the man whose hair he is cutting promptly falls asleep in the barber's chair. Who wrote this? A woman tells her husband that she'll sleep with the first man she meets, Jack (Depp) tells Ben to keep her husband away from their room, and whaddaya know -- the husband, Andrew Dice Clay, suddenly needs to get into their hotel room very badly.

There is a good amount of nudity. Lots of topless women, and Johnny Depp's ass for about ten seconds. You get to see Rob Morrow's ass for about ten minutes, though. Cha-ching!

It's silly and stupid and even though there's a gun battle at the end, it doesn't feel real. It's all too comic to be honest. Nobody is really going to die, or have their hearts broken, or get caught by security guards and thrown out of the building, or anything. The movie opens with all of the characters already at this unnamed "private resort", and that's where they stay throughout the movie. It feels like Hotel California: they can check out any time they like, but they can never leave. I imagine that this place is like some sort of limbo between life and death. Not Hell, certainly, but not quite Heaven either. It's just a place where these characters will be stuck for eternity. Rob Morrow forever giving us that goofy tongue-between-his-teeth smile, Johnny Depp always handing used condoms to the concierge. And they're oblivious to the fact that they're just living out this lame Three Stooges rip-off day after day for all time.

I'm sure I'm putting WAY too much thought into what is essentially a brain-dead sex 'comedy', but when I think of the characters as being stuck in this time-warp in the middle of a void, it makes their plight both remarkably pathetic and endearing.

The movie isn't really funny, but it's trying so gosh darn hard to be, and that is what makes me laugh.

P.S. Did I mention Rob Morrow's ass? Because it's in the movie. A lot. Seriously.