Review of Rated X (2000) by Hindénbörg E — 06 Oct 2007

If this movie were in the right hands it could have been turned into a great film. Unfortunately, Emilio "Men at Work" Estevez is the man behind the camera.

This movie has not one, but two great stories to tell: A) The rise of the now faded porn subculture of the 70's and 80's and B) The Kane and Abel tragedy that befell the Mitchell brothers.

And it DOES tell both those stories, but it's at such a completely rudimentary and sophmoric level that it's just completely meaningless.

I didn't know much about the Mitchell brothers before I watched the movie and by the end I managed to know even less. If Estevez wanted to make a biopic then he could have done a little more research on his subjects. The end result of "Rated X" just feels like a skeletal of any random "E! True Hollywood Story":

In fact, here's pretty much the entire movie summarized:

-Brothers are kids. They are close.

-Brothers grow up. Suddenly they're in the porn business.

-One brother has a bad coke problem, his marriage goes bad, and now he's paranoid and crazy and still has a coke problem.

-Brother shoots brother.

-The End.

And that's basically it. A lot could have been branched off from all of those elements to create an engaging film, but nothing ever comes to. The movie is loaded with conflicts, but there's no development to any of them. It just declines into a generic mess of people snorting coke and acting crazy because their lives are so lost... If you're going to do something like this try expanding more on the "why" or "how they get there" aspects of it rather than just the problem itself. It makes for a piss poor film; biopic or otherwise.

To its credit, the movie is made watchable because of its inteptitude; especially on Charlie Sheen's behalf. Watching him overact doing his best "I'm a crazy destructive cokehead" role that he can muster is one of the funniest things I've seen recently. I can't imagine how hilarious it probably was when he was going through the same thing in real life. If filmed it probably would have been the best episode of "Two & A Half Men" ever.

Not only is it a poor execution of a great story, but it's also just a badly made movie in general. I won't go too much into it, but it's so full of holes and inconsistencies that you can devise one hell of a drinking game around it.

If you want to see a much better film concerning a similar subject then watch "Boogie Nights" or the "Taint" sketch from the fourth season of Mr. Show. Or even read Allan McDonnel's account of his time working for Hustler magazine in "Prisoner of X.".