Review: My Tutor

Matt Lattanzi plays a high school virgin who keeps trying to ‘lose it’, but wacky circumstances continually get in the way. Being that he is failing French, his demanding father (Kevin McCarthy) worries the boy won’t get into Yale. So he hires a French tutor for the strapping young lad. Enter 29 year-old blonde Caren Kaye, who while staying at their house not only tutors the boy in the language of love, she frequently skinny dips at night and sends his hormones in to apoplexy. She wouldn’t be interested in a teenager, right? Nope, but since we’re talking about Matt Lattanzi, you’re supposed to ignore common sense. Crispin Glover plays one of Lattanzi’s pals (Believe me, that’s one of the easier things to swallow here), Arlene Golonka is his wacky mother, Amber Denyse Austin plays a pretty girl at school, and Kitten Natividad’s ‘assets’ are on show as a very mammer-able hooker in a brothel. And no, I will not apologise for that awful joke. Don’t pretend you didn’t giggle.

 

Occupying an odd and unsatisfying place between “Last American Virgin” 80s sex comedy and “Private Lessons” older woman/teen sex fantasy flick, this 1983 film from director George Bowers (“The Hearse”, “Private Resort”) and screenwriter Joe Roberts (who apparently never worked in the industry again) tries to cram way too much stuff in for one movie. The combination of “The Last American Virgin” and “Private Lessons” proves quite irritating actually, because you can’t quite latch on to any one thing when Roberts is throwing out so much stuff from all directions. You’ve got the lead character, the tutor, another hot chick as back-up (the hot Amber Denyse Austin, who sadly never gets naked), the “Risky Business”-esque stuff with the kid, his dad, and college, and the kid and his buddies trying to lose their virginity right out of “The Last American Virgin” or “Porky’s”. All in one 90 minute film. It’s a real mess and ultimately not very satisfying.

 

Casting issues in regards to leads Matt Lattanzi and Caren Kaye don’t help, either, though seeing Olivia Newton-John’s now ex-husband in a film that tries to make aerobics workout montages seem sexy, is quite ironic. All that thrusting in unflattering costumes doesn’t do it for me, I’m afraid. Lattanzi is an awful actor, and leaves a black hole at the centre of the film. Kaye’s a genuinely decent actress (It boggles my mind that she left the industry pretty quickly afterwards), but although she is beautiful and has a sexy body, she’s all wrong for this part. Her character in the film is meant to be 29, but being born in 1951, Ms. Kaye was about 33 at the time, and pretty much looks it. A stunningly beautiful 33 years-old, absolutely without question, but definitely 33. There’s definitely a difference between 29 and 33. As a man in my mid-30s, I know the difference all too well. The bigger problem? Lattanzi himself was 25 at the time and looks every bit of 25, maybe older. So we’ve got a May-December set-up going on here between two actors who look like consenting adults (and then some), and are visibly only 8 years apart in age in reality, let alone that 29 really doesn’t seem that scandalous anyway, at least not as scandalous as say 35-45 would be. Then again, this is a film that wants us to believe that a high schooler played by Matt Lattanzi would still be a virgin in his final year. Um…no. With those eyes and that six-pack, he’s not having any trouble getting a root I guarantee you (He does come across as a complete dork, though. I don’t think it’s intentional, however).

 

As I said, Kaye’s performance is technically very competent for this sort of sleaze, but her demeanour and screen persona here send off entirely the wrong vibes. I kept thinking I was watching Lattanzi trying to make it with Doogie Howser’s (Belinda Montgomery) or Kirk Cameron’s (Joanna Kerns) TV mum. A sexy tutor getting it on with her pupil, should absolutely, positively never give off ‘TV mum’ vibes. It’s bizarre, but let me make it perfectly clear that this is a casting problem, not an acting one. Kaye’s sincerity in her performance is actually one of the film’s strongest assets, even if she doesn’t have that essential Sybil Danning/Leslie Easterbrook/Kelly LeBrock vibe. Her sexy body is undoubtedly another asset (or three), of course.

 

But even if you can get over the bizarre central casting, the filmmakers do a total botch job by having the first sex scene come from out of nowhere. There’s not enough investment shown on Kaye’s part, and barely even enough on Lattanzi’s part to let her know he’s interested in her. It’s bizarre that director Bowers ended up a successful editor in the years after this, because it feels so jarringly put together, or maybe it’s merely a flaw in the screenplay. Either way, I think they blew their wad way too soon here for a 90 minute movie. If you still find yourself accepting all of this (and the fact that Lattanzi reads the Kama Sutra after having sex with the tutor), you still have to contend with the fact that the big sex scene is accompanied by an appallingly shrill and loud love song by Kathy Brown called ‘The First Time We Make Love’, that absolutely kills the mood.

 

And even if you can accept all that, you won’t believe how the filmmakers resolve the central romance/relationship. In fact, they barely even try to resolve it. (**** SPOILER ALERT **** Notice that she never actually dumps him, she simply goes to France for a bit and he decides to move on to the other girl. Is he nucking futs? Apparently so. **** END SPOILER ****). The funny thing about this plot, is that when you think about it, it’s not too far removed from something you’d see on video or cable in the 90s, but with a different tone. In the 90s, it’d be a thriller where the tutor would be fucking several members of the family, plotting to kill the wife, running off with the dad, and framing the son, whilst eventually bumping off the dad too. Watch the film and tell me I’m wrong.

 

The usually excellent Kevin McCarthy must’ve lost money at the track, and barely invests anything in his performance here as Lattanzi’s dad. He and Arlene Golonka are beyond wasted. There’s a few chuckles here and there, mostly from Crispin Glover being Crispin Glover (in his movie debut, no less), a cute “The Graduate” reference (It’s computer chips this time, not plastics), and you get to see the notorious Kitten Natividad’s spectacularly huge (and hugely spectacular) mammaries for you Russ Meyer fans out there. Lattanzi fainting at the sight of them is pretty hilarious.

 

So it’s not a dud, just barely average, miscalculated, and having a pretty putrid view of women throughout (Even for this kind of thing. I haven’t even mentioned Katt Shea as a female mud wrestler, or the waitress/whore. Believe me, she really is a waitress/whore). Oh, and whoever advised Lattanzi to skip in the air at the end like a Toyota commercial should be taken out and shot, dug up, taken out and shot again.

 

Rating: C