Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Angela, as played by actress Karin Anna Cheung, is a lovely young woman of suspect moral value. A slut some would say though Angela would beg to differ as she would point out a slut is simply a woman with a man’s sexual appetite, but a man who has sex with a couple hundred women in a couple years time would also be of suspect moral value. The problem in this movie ‘The People I’ve Slept With’ is that Angela has gotten herself knocked up and needs to find out who the babies daddy is. Just so you know, Columbo, McCloud, Matt Houston, Mike Hammer, and any other detective you can think of have all turned this gig down because finding out who the seed giver is in this ladies life is going to be a humdinger. This would be the first time I’ve used the word ‘humdinger’ in a sentence.

Angela’s first instinct, and championed by her good gay friend Gabriel (Wilson Cruz) is to terminate the damn thing. Get used to watching Gabriel make out with a lot of other dudes in this movie. In fact I think Gabriel gets more dick in this movie than Angela, and Angela is a slut. Angela’s bible thumping sister Juliet (Lynn Chen) has convinced Angela that she needs to see this thing through considering she is getting up there in years and babies for some are hard to come by. With that decision made now it’s time go through her collection of sex buddy cards, and there are a lot cards in Angela’s collection, and start eliminating.

She’s narrowed it down to four dudes who she is aware that she has had unprotected sex with in the allotted time frame. The neighbor Mr. Hottie, the 5 Second guy, the nice but boring guy and Jefferson the Mystery Guy (Archie Kao). There’s a bonus dude in the mix but you’re gonna have to watch for yourself to meet him. She’d like it to be Jefferson considering he’s like the best looking and the brightest of the crew and he is the one that she is still kicking it with, plus they seem to genuinely like each other but regardless she has to get DNA samples from each potential daddy to make sure. It’s a disgusting as it sounds.

There are other things going on such as Gabriel fighting his own slutty issues as he has found true love in the convenience store clerk down the street, Angela’s old man is causing her sister some stress with the young hottie that he’s dating, She hasn’t told Jefferson everything he needs to know about herself fearing it will turn him away, Jefferson is keeping his own set of secrets from Angela and she can’t find out who the babies daddy is until after the baby is actually born. Still, it looks like everything is going to work out. Until it doesn’t work out. I think that’s the part I’m a little confused about.

Before I get into this movie there is one thing highlighted in this movie that has always vexed me and that’s certain individuals reliance on alcohol to have sex. For instance a lot of Angela’s sexual trysts were behind being stone cold stinking drunk, and this is a reality. Now Angela didn’t need to be drunk to have sex considering she’s a slut to her very heart but far too often I’ve seen where folks have to get drunk, then have sex, and can’t remember who they just fucked or even if they fucked. What good is fuckin’ if you can’t remember doing it? Without the memory of the good time the only thing left behind is the possibility of V.D. and pregnancy. Stop drinking and fucking. It’s stupid. That should be PSA poster slogan.

Back to the movie, I’m not quite sure about ‘The People I’ve Slept With’ directed by Quentin Lee. His movie is well acted, it’s well shot, the characters are clearly defined for the most part and the story is an intriguing one but as it plays out to its conclusion I guess my confusion is ‘what was the point?’ At first we’re thinking that this is a movie about a sexually independent woman who is cool with the way she’s living her life, noting that enjoying sex and enjoying sex with a couple hundred people are two different things, but we will roll with that. Then she’s not cool with her sexual independence and is miserable about it. If she was okay with it then she would’ve shown Jefferson her cards and leave it up to him to make the decision.

Here’s where it gets confusing as far as Angela is concerned. Everything goes the way it was supposed to, she has Jefferson but now she’s upset because Jefferson doesn’t really know her. So we’ve observed these two people in this movie and eventually they seem to be honest with each other, they seem to make each other better people from what we are given about these characters, but now Angela doesn’t want the relationship anymore. We observed that Jefferson met Angela in the afternoon and had unprotected sex with her before dinner that same day. He probably has a good idea what kind of person she is and yet he still wants to marry her, whoever the father of the baby might be. It seems like a good relationship. But apparently not. The sister is in a seemingly stable relationship but she’s portrayed as miserable. The father has stated he was in a miserable relationship with the mother of his daughters for the vast majority of their marriage. Thus we have the message that stable relationships are bad.

So in the beginning Angela was happy being sexually independent, in the middle she was sad that she was a slut, in the end she’s happy that she was a slut, but is a slut no more, and happier still that she’s a mom. I guess. Because stable relationships are bad. I don’t know what the point was, is the short of it. Karina Anna Cheung made for one glorious slut though. We saw her in the movie ‘Abominable’ where she got eaten by Sasquatch and I didn’t think anything the woman did could ever trump the awesome performance in a movie I called the ‘Best Bigfoot Movie Ever’. But she killed it here.

Anyways, ‘The People I’ve Slept With’ is just one of those movies I didn’t ‘get’. Beyond my simple levels of comprehension. I liked watching it roll across the screen, but I don’t know what, if anything, I was supposed to get out of it.