Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Every once in a while I do this thing, a thing that usually only applies to comedies and if I do this thing it’s not a good thing for the comedy I’m watching. This thing is watching the timer on the DVD player below the tele to see when is the first time this comedy is going to make me laugh. This is a bad thing for a comedy for a number of reasons, with one being that’s it’s not all that hard to make me laugh, and another being that if this initial laugh hasn’t occurred in like the first three or four minutes then the clock watching subsequently starts. The first laugh for this ‘comedy’ which has titled itself ‘Cloud 9’ occurred at the 56:21 mark and truth be told even that’s not entirely correct because I was actually laughing at the movie and not with the movie as this particular scene was supposed to be sad and introspective. But still that scene did manage to make me laugh. The worst part is that was the last laugh as ‘Cloud 9’ is a star representative of possibly one of the least funniest comedies in the history of the planet earth.
The films open with a shot of never do well Billy Cole, played by our star Burt Reynolds, who at one point in his life was the worlds biggest movie star, lounging in the Malibu pool of Brolin and Streisand. It so happens that Billy has an adopted Black son nicknamed Ten Spot played by D.L. Hughley, who at one time was one of America’s brightest and most cutting edge comedians, who drives limo’s and alerts his ‘dad’ when his clients will be out of town so he can lounge in their pools and shower on occasion. I don’t know if any of that sounded funny to you, but I watched it and it wasn’t.
Billy is a worthless conman who has gotten the bright idea to combine the hot sport of Beach Volleyball with time tested occupation of stripping. It’s a complex system but Billy figures he’ll make a killing and to that end he enlists the help of a quartet of lovely strippers that include Russian transplant Olga (Kathryn Winnick), dumb blonde Crystal
(Marnette Patterson), feisty chiquita Corazon (Patricia DeLeon) and neck-waving sista Champagne (Kenya Moore). Also we have these ladies stripping den mother Julie (Angie Everhardt) who feels Billy is just exploiting these strippers. Why this shrew would think strippers playing Beach Volleyball is exploitative is beyond me.
So what’s going to happen is the girls suck at volleyball, get all upset at being exploited, practice real hard and then make it all the way to the top of the beach volleyball ladder before facing off in the championship against Beach volleyball superstar Gabriel Reece and her partner who feel that these strippers are a blight on her respectable sport.
‘Cloud 9’ was terrible. There are a number of reasons that this movie was awful with the first one being that it’s NOT FUNNY! Not even a little bit. Now that we’ve established that little fact about this ‘comedy’ lets examine some other stuff that sucks. This is an R-rated comedy about strippers so at least we’ll have copious amounts of nudity, correct? Well not exactly. Now if you were to ask me to off hand in two seconds to suggest two actresses to put in a movie I would probably blurt out Kenya Moore and Kathryn Winnick. I’ll even admit I’ve been unofficially stalking Kenya Moore since she won Miss USA back in nineteen ninety whatever. Also when I was saying my wedding vows and the reverend got to that line about anybody objecting, I was looking out the corner of my eye thinking that Kenya just might burst through those doors and profess her undying love. Both of those ladies are quite lovely, but neither of them are getting naked in a movie. Trust me, I’ve searched and searched. Nor do the other two main actresses or even Angie Everhardt for that matter who we’ve know likes to get down when the role calls for it. Knowing this I probably wouldn’t have cast any of them as strippers in my movie because where I come from strippers get naked. Make them cocktail waitresses or something if these are the ladies you have to have in your flick, but not strippers. There were some wayward tittes in this flick, just not from our starlets.
We have surmised to this point and established that the movie is not funny, not even a little tiny bit, there’s no nudity from anybody you want to see naked, though Burt does spend a lot of time with his shirt off for those who may like that kind of thing, which leaves the remainder of the movie resting on the sports angle and the volleyball to carry it through. And with that we’ll just move on and close out this little article.
Allow me to prevent you from being like me, people, and avoid this one. I was of the mind set that with Burt Reynolds who we know his best days are far behind him, but he’s still Burt Freaking Reynolds, D.L. Hughley who I didn’t know his best days were behind him until I saw this movie, and Kenya Moore who we won’t say her best days are behind her, but there sure is something back there… that ‘Cloud 9’ had to have at least have some intrinsic value. Wrong again my man… wrong again.
