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My Tutor | Year: 1983 Classification: Comedy Directed: - George Bowers Actors/Actresses: - Caren Kaye - Matt Lattanzi - Kevin McCarthy - Clark Brandon Good Idea, Bad Execution Partway through watching My Tutor on DVD, I remembered I'd seen it in the theater when it first came out. Back then I had the same reaction I do today: this movie could have been a whole lot better than it is. Bobby Chrystal (Matt Lattanzi) has failed his high school senior year French finals. This means he won't be able to get into Yale, a situation intolerable to his overbearing Yaley dad (Kevin McCarthy, best known for playing the main character in the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Dad hires beautiful blond Terry Green (Caren Kaye) to be Bobby's summer live-in French tutor. If Bobby can pass a makeup French test at school, all past educational shortcomings will be forgiven and the halls of Yale pre-law beckon. However, Bobby learns a whole lot more from Terry than French as she becomes his first lover. That bare description of plot sounds like it could make a sweet romantic comedy. And it could - it just doesn't. To start with there's the sub-plot of Bobby's friend Billy (Clark Brandon) and his repeated, unsuccessful efforts to get his younger brother (Crispin Glover) and Bobby laid, including a trip to the most dysfunctional brothel on God's green earth, hooking them up with a trashy waitress with a biker boyfriend, etc. These episodes simply aren't funny. Bobby, the main character we should like, is a whiny punk. The acting by all concerned is frankly not that great. There's not much in the way of chemistry between Lattanzi and Kaye, especially early-on. Rather than real people who find each other attractive, they come across like beautiful actors reading their lines - badly. (They do get better as the movie progresses.) The way the two characters hook up - not to give away too much of the scintillating plot - is unbelievable. We don't see the relationship develop through time, from attraction to liking to, eventually, sex. Toward the end of the movie, after Bobby's treated Terry quite decently during the relationship, it's back to acting like a whiny punk when it becomes obvious they're not going to last. You just want to slap this guy upside the head. There are a few good things in My Tutor. In-between the unrealistic start of the relationship and Bobby acting like a baby toward the end, there's some genuinely sweet stuff as Bobby and Terry pillow talk in bed. It's nice. And Billy's comeback to a girl at a party who refuses to dance with him is one of the funniest things I've ever heard in any film. I really want to like this movie for the few things it does right; unfortunately they're not enough to counterbalance the many things it does wrong. In my mind I contrast My Tutor to Coach, the 1978 Cathy Lee Crosby/Michael Biehn movie also dealing with a 30-ish woman in a sexual relationship with a high school student. Coach doesn't have quite the production values of My Tutor, it's not as slick and glossy, and its sub-plot of the upcoming "big game" basketball championship is frankly ridiculous, but at heart it's a Dull but cute The main reason to watch this flick is if you have a thing for gay male porno star of yesteryear, Tom Steele. The leading guy looks just like him. You see a lot less of this guy, if you catch my drift, but it's cute and watchable in a nostalgia kind of way if you remember seeing it on cable 20 years ago. "School's out...but Bobby's education has just begun..." See Bobby (Matt Lattanzi). See Bobby flunk French. Flunk, Bobby, flunk. See Bobby's dad (Kevin McCarthy). See Bobby's dad hire a tutor (Caren Kaye) to French Bobby during the summer. No, wait, I mean to teach Bobby French. "My Tutor" is a 1983 example of the teensploitation genre that kept USA's late night movie show "Up All Night" in business for years. It is a good thing Bobby's tutor likes to take advantage of the family pool late at night and take bikini breaks during class, because it gives us an excuse to ignore the leading man, who has zero charisma to go along with his low test scores. At least he looks old enough that your mind is not distracted by legal complications arising from their interaction. However, in a limited defense of this film it should be pointed out that the "love scenes" are taken seriously, avoiding the raunchy comedy that derails most of these films, so while "My Tutor" is bad it does not descend to the level of being truly awful. You just have to bite the bullet and treat the storyline seriously. Crispin Glover plays Bobby's best friend and serves as a reminder that some actors get out of these low-grade B-movies alive despite scenes that should have inspired them to buy every copy of this tape available in the world and have them destroyed. However, when the cutest girl in the film (Kitten Natividad) is just dropping by for a cameo, that is not a good sign. Otherwise, this is your basic arrested male adolescent sexual fantasy film, which is all you really need to know to decide if you want to spend 90-minutes of your life sitting through "My Tutor." All I can say is that I hope those who insist bad movies be reviewed to achieve a sense of balance are happy now. Buy My Tutor at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on My Tutor Search with the Priority Search Engine on My Tutor This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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