DVD Review: “Stood Up”

If you want your top-notch millennial porn mixed with late 80's standup comedy, then "Stood Up" is for you. The fictionalized (think of Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" except with sweet, sweet Lanny Barby getting double-teamed by a dude and a hot chick) tale of Howard Stern regular "The Reverend" Bob Levy's travails in the cutthroat world of comics, "Stood Up" is worth a thousand Kim Kardashians.

Read our review after the gap.

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Stood Up

Studio: Vivid
Director: B Skow
Cast: Savanna Samson, Bob Levy, Lanny Barby, Moni Michaels, Kimberly Kane, Penny Flame, Kimberly Franklin, Evan Stone, Tommy Gunn, Lee Stone

Review by Gram Ponante

This pornolized account of comedian "Reverend" Bob Levy's rise to semi-stardom is a searing documentary about the bitterness of the standup road warrior masquerading as a porn movie.

Told in flashbacks to a fan, Stood Up is probably the movie Howard Stern would like to have made about him, but Levy had the idea first.

Levy plays himself as the narrator, but in flashback scenes, such as the one in which a younger Levy meets his agent, played by Savanna Samson, Tommy Gunn takes over Levy duties. Samson and Gunn fuck in the green room after a gig. She looks fantastic, and the production doesn't skimp on giving Gunn a little time in front of the microphone at a dingy club.

Levy tells his fan that the agent went on to get him a series of crappy gigs, including a bachelor party at which he is assaulted by a brute named Andy (Lee Stone) who horns in on Levy's strippers, but not before confiscating a bag containing Levy's act, which consists of "a bunch of nursey rhymes".

We are meant to believe that this was Andrew Dice Clay, and Stone does a good job impersonating him. Then he fucks Lanny Barby. Breasts like Barby's didn't exist in 1982, but who cares?

At a Long Island Jewish wedding reception in 1985, Jerry the waiter (James Deen) sneaks a look at the script Levy has written, a sitcom pilot "about nothing". Levy is onstage telling the guests how cheap they are. Meanwhile Jerry takes advantage of the JAPpy Penny Flame in a very hot scene. Even if the rest of the movie is not to be believed, we can at least feel that Deen and Flame really like each other.

I'll say it again: Penny Flame in a yellow summer dress is awesome. The "Jewish" ad-libbing of the wedding guests, however, about money, diamonds, real estate, and lawyers, seemed like jokes from another time (Oh yeah - it was supposed to be 1985). But a mainstream movie would not allow this sort of humor. Not because porn is the last bastion of free speech, but because the jokes were old.

Despite what appears to be ten years of bad bookings, Levy still retains his manager until a disastrous 1992 show in a Georgia roadhouse, where his "You know you're a hillbilly" routine is copied by someone who looks like Jeff Foxworthy. Levy and Samson get into it backstage.

"Hack!" Samson says.

"Cum Bucket," Levy responds. "I should knock you the fuck out."

Levy himself is knocked out by hillbilly Evan Stone, who proceeds to entice girlfriend Kimberly Kane and Savanna back to his motor home. This leads to another funny scene, this time about Stone's "girth".

This is a movie you should watch so I won't give away the ending; I'll just say that bad things keep happening to Levy.

Stood Up is Vivid firing on all cylinders. It is just the type of stuff they should be doing, and that they do well. Everybody looks good in it.

Except for Levy. While Levy is made to look like the victim throughout the movie, his banter and short routines are all of that late 80's/early 90's abusive standup style, which makes the parts of the movie Levy is not in classier than the parts he is. Obviously a talented guy, it is sad that he is upstaged in his own movie. But how could he not be? Penny Flame in a yellow dress, and then out of it, beats cheap Jew jokes every time.

As far as celebrity porn movies, though, Levy puts on a better show than Snoop did.

· Vivid (vivid.com)
· Buy "Stood Up" (gamelink.com)