The Pool Boys

Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Hmmm…. An enterprising young man wants to get into an Ivy league school and needs money, meets and falls for a call girl, turns a house that he is staying at into a brothel, makes money, evil dude takes all of his money, he needs more money, throws a big prostitute party to get this money, parents are coming to this house quickly… you know I do believe I have seen this movie. Yeah, back in 1983, Tommy Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay… ‘Risky Business’ I believe it was called. So what’s worse… A legitimate remake of a movie that didn’t need to be remade or a bastardized movie fronting as original, which is actually a remake of a movie that didn’t need to be remade?

There are some differences between this movie ‘The Pool Boys’ or ‘American Summer’ which separate it from ‘Risky Business’ outside of the fact that its way shittier than ‘Risky Business’ of course. For instance our film begins with the narration of Matthew Lillard as the character of Roger. Matthew Lillard’s narration adds nothing to this movie. Truly adds nothing as the narrator simply tells us what is about to happen. In fact if the powers that be were to go back to the editing room and remove his narration you wouldn’t miss it and the movie would probably be better for it.

Anyway this movie centers around young Alex Sperling (Brett Davern), a boy who has graduated at the top of his high school class and is on his way to D.C. to take an internship that will guarantee his entry into Harvard via scholarship. Unfortunately, due to no fault of his own, something goes terribly wrong with this and now Alex is off to Hollywood to seek the aid of his hugely successful cousin Roger who should be able to hook him up a job at his mega corp so that he can get this scholarship. Problem is that Roger isn’t the owner of a mega corp, but is instead a Harvard dropout, dope smoking pool boy.

Alex isn’t happy about this deception but he has made the acquaintance of the lovely whore Laura (Rachel Lefevre) which makes this sad situation not so bad anymore. Roger has the bright idea, considering one the homes he services will be free for six weeks, that they turn the house into a brothel. Alex isn’t down with this but eventually

he comes around. Now this house is in full brothel mode with depravity falling off the walls with Roger rolling in the money and Alex and his new paramour Laura falling for each other. As mentioned the evil brothel busting dude shows and ruins everything driving a wedge between Alex and his cousin Roger but they kiss and make up, form a plan to get this money back and ultimately get Alex back on his Harvard Track via the big party with the parents closing in.

Yes, the parallels between ‘Risky Business’ and ‘The Pool Boys’ are a kind of blatant, to the point that if Warner Brothers felt the need to lob some litigation towards Seven Arts Pictures I couldn’t blame them. Yes, young Brett Draven is no young Tommy Cruise and the filmmakers chose to make Rachel Lefevre’s prostitute the friendly, nice girl next door type prostitute as opposed to the gloriously brazen exhibitionist hussy of a whore that Rebecca De Mornay played so deftly in ‘Risky Business’ and true enough ‘The Pool Boys’ doesn’t even remotely rise up to the level of subversion that ‘Risky Business’ dropped on us teenage boys back in 1983. But ‘The Pool Boys’ wasn’t awful. It was pointless, insignificant and sorely lacking in humor… but it wasn’t awful.

While saying that a movie is sorely lacking in comedy, one that is labeled as a comedy, in addition to calling this movie ‘insignificant’ and ‘pointless’ might lead one to think that is indeed awful, but ‘The Pool Boys’ is oddly watchable despite its shortcomings. Some of this watchability might be attributed to the fact that there are a lot gloriously overdeveloped women in this film walking around naked. Always have to account for the nudity factor. And while the movie is almost never laugh out loud funny it is at least consistently mildly amusing with a lot of this mild amusement coming via Tom Arnold playing himself and Efren Ramirez. One of the problems that does pop up with this flick is, when you have a movie that is knee deep in immorality as this is, then it either needs to be very, very funny to off set this immorality, which this one is not, or it needs to be brazenly inappropriate to point of making us uncomfortable, and its not that either. I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to make a tasteless teen type sex comedy, then by all means… make it tasteless baby. Don’t get me wrong, this movie was kind of tasteless, but just not tasteless enough.

So if you want to be mildly amused for ninety or so minutes and see some titties on occasion then here you go. Or you could rent ‘Risky Business’ again to view what this concept was supposed to look like and see Tommy Cruise before L. Ron made him Karazay!