Review: Political sex farce ‘C Street’ fails big-time
As if approval ratings for Congress weren’t low enough, along comes the execrable sex farce “C Street” to bury the institution altogether. It’s one of the most ineptly crafted, thuddingly unfunny movies to show up on a big screen in recent memory.
Although it aims to be a kind of Capitol Hill version of “The Apartment” (it wishes!), this cheesy-looking, Brooklyn-shot film, directed by Peter James Iengo from a script by Brett Lewis, makes so little narrative sense it feels concocted on the fly. It plays more like bad, strung-together sketch comedy bits than an actual movie.
The “plot” involves Guy (Evan Hall), an ambitious intern who lets his smarmy boss, Sen. Fallon (Dylan Walsh), and other moronic politicians (Michael Gross, Bruce Altman, Jessica Blank, Jason Griffith), use his dumpy little C Street apartment for their sexual trysts, all in a seeming quest for power. But when Guy falls for Fallon’s mistress (Shaun Licata), all bets, of course, are off.
The film’s attempt to skewer right-wing hypocrisy, backroom political wrangling, cable TV news coverage and more is completely torpedoed by its sloppy, overly broad approach and yuk-yuk philosophy. This also results in dunderheaded takes on gays, women, Latinos, the clergy, the disabled, Republicans and, heaven help us, male ballet dancers.
“C Street” gets an F.
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‘C Street’
MPAA rating: R, for some sexual content and drug material
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica
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