Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
‘The Deviants’ is special because I watched it in a brand new way. So I’m watching some movie on TV called ‘For Real’ and the female lead, one Tamara Curry, is pretty damn fine so I pull up the old IMDB to see what sista girl has popped up in. I see this movie called ‘The Deviants’ and the description is fairly interesting so I decide to log on to Netflix and toss it in my cue. Netflix now has thing called Instant Viewing in which you can actually stream some of their movies, usually ones that either aren’t very good or in low demand truth be told, straight to your PC and ‘The Deviants’ was one of these movies. Despite the fact I have a pretty big PC monitor I’m still not going to sit in a chair in front my computer for an hour and half or more watching some movie. But me being the technical kind of guy that I am happen have a small PC connected to my living room LCD TV via the VGA port on the TV. For those who don’t know they call these things a Home Theater Personal Computer or HTPC for short. So what we have here is a PC with essentially a 37 inch monitor. The resolution is too low to type on so you wouldn’t want to do a term paper or crunch a spread sheet but you can play the occasional PC game on it and as I have now found out, stream some full screen Netflix movies right to your living room, assuming you have a decent Internet connection flowing. I’m glad to report that this Instant Viewing thing from Netflix worked flawlessly with no skips or pauses or jumps and the quality was decent, maybe not quite as crisp as a store brought DVD, but more than watchable with good sound. Considering Netflix isn’t tearing me off a single thin dime I shouldn’t give them any unnecessary free advertising but the system works and I will be attempting to use up all of my allotted hours each month.
But on to ‘The Deviants’!
Norm (Doug Dezzani) is a self-styled sex therapist / match maker who has carved a niche into finding mates for people who have sexual pathologies. Say like a guy who likes to get off by having cats sit on his lap or a woman who can only achieve orgasm by standing on her head. Norm’s assistant Monique (Curry) wants to be more involved in the matchmaking process but Norm doesn’t think she’s quite ready to take on the heavy responsibility of matching up pubic hair freaks and dudes who have urine fetishes. Norm and Monique have their own personal problems to deal with Norm trying to achieve that perfect orgasm with his nymphomanical, possessive, insanely jealous girlfriend Madeline (Johanna Black), and Monique being unsure about her feelings with her Dentist boyfriend Jerry (Perry Shen) who has asked her to move in with him but has yet made that big sexual move. Krazy fool.
Eventually Norm lightens up and takes on Monique as a full partner as the clientele that they have to deal with gets weirder and weirder. The Jealous Madeline is none too pleased with all the time that Norm is spending with his sexy assistant with the phenomenally full lips and unusually wide hips, I threw that in there, though I should add that Johanna Black ain’t exactly day old bread herself. Since this is a Romantic Comedy, more or less, you know that crazy stuff has to happen and it all has to end in a way where everybody is happy and gives us the reassuring message that sometimes what you need most is often right under your nose.
I don’t like Romantic Comedies. Romantic Comedies are guilty of telling the same story with different actors more than any other genre of film. Just watch some Cary Grant flick from the fifties and marvel how it’s identical to a Matthew McConaughey joint in the new millennium. What could possibly be the chances of someone who doesn’t like RomCom’s to be entertained by a RomCom that is on the way low end of the budget scale, filled with actors I challenge you to recognize, with a large number of those actors not being all the great. Surprisingly high as it turns out.
Though the quality of ‘The Deviants’ in suspect, and this is without argument, it still manages to take a unique, somewhat raunchy view of dating and love and flip it around in an amusing way. This is a film that has a number of genuine humorous moments within a very sharp and amusing script that is filled with oddball and unique characters. Though some of the acting came off as bit amateurish in parts, the effort put in by the performers was always 100 percent and did I mention that Tamara Curry has arguably the most amazing set of lips in the history of filmed entertainment? Arguably? But you don’t have to watch the movie to actually see those as I’m sure there is a picture somewhere on the Internet.
‘The Deviants’ ain’t exactly ‘Some Like it Hot’ or anything but it is a bawdy, sexy comedy that at least attacks a very tired genre at different angle, and manages to be reasonably entertaining because of that effort.
