GENRE: Straight Feature
DIRECTOR: Devinn Lane
STARS: Shy Love, Jennifer Luv, Lola, Olivia O'Lovely, Yasmine Vega, Nick Manning, Marcos Leon, Tommy Gunn
DATES OF PRODUCTION: 2004
LENGTH: 100 mins with bonus material

Since the beginning of its bawdiness, the adult film has wanted to emulate and mimick the mainstream motion picture. Sometimes, they do it just as a frame of reference, to give the fucking a reality-based reason to exist, and frequently there is a desire to spoof or lampoon something that the raincoat crowd would easily recognize and find riotous. When they get it right, it is impossible not to be impressed. A porn that plays like a real movie is something rare indeed, since hardcore sex, by its very nature, tends to overpower everything in its pulchritude path. No matter how intriguing the set up or powerful the premise, once you show a couple eating out each other's asses, all narrative bets are kind of off.

So naturally, one has to wonder, if there can be times when a normal storyline can, itself, overwhelm a bunch of XXX tricks. The answer, interestingly enough, is Latin Car Show Queens. Basically a buddy movie about a couple of smokin' Hispanic babes who want to get into the world of professional car show modeling and beauty competitions, this 75 minute marriage of narrative and nookie is a little off balance. But it's the plot, not the plooking that seems to stifle the sin. With only six scenes (one of them a highlighted repeat of a previous encounter) and limited lewdness from the cast, this is one fuck and suck showcase that feels burdened by character and contrivance, not cock to cunt fun.

The DVD:
While it is arguably a clothesline production, using the car show setup as a way to get to all the shark shenanigans, it is just plain odd how much of Latin Car Show Queens feels like a film with occasional hardcore sex - not the other way around. Maybe it's because Shy Love and Jennifer Luv are so convincing as lost little Latinas trying to trade on their attractiveness to get (and give) ahead. It could be that director Devinn Lane is going for a more romantic feel to her film, allowing the relationship between Shy's Jasmine and Tommy Gunn's Yo-Yo to blossom and gel with a real sense of friendship and feeling. It could also be that the fucking itself is so uneventful that we focus more on the interpersonal problems than the amount of dick in dumper. Whatever the case, Latin Car Show Queens is tepid instead of terrific.

It has to be said that Lane does herself 2/3rds of a disservice with the male leads she picks for this flick. Nick Manning is not a favorite of the Dirge, as he comes across as more cocksure than cocksman. His fucking is always direct, mechanical and borderline mean-spirited. And the dude really needs to shut his trap when he's tripping the twat fantastic. He just can't stop shouting out stupid shit – epithets and exclamations that aren't sexy or cool, just crude and rude. And though he's hardly the he-Manning Nick makes himself out to be, Marcos Leon is also a limp letdown here. Rather unattractive, with minimal animal magnetism or virile machismo, he looks like a kid that just wandered onto the set and decided to have sex. Manning and Marcos each get two scenes, and that means that it is left to a last minute pairing of Love and Gunn to save the show. They almost do.

From a plot standpoint, Latin Car Show Queens is about betrayal and comradeship, corruption and crazy cool lowriders. Shy Love is Jasmine, and Jennifer Luv is Baby. They are best friends, working together as maids to make money. When Shy starts having success as a car show model, Jennifer wants it. Shy gives her the number of a man who can set up a tryout, and when she calls the mysterious mister, he suggests she see his son, Li'l Dog (ZZZsnoreZZZ – what a hackneyed nickname). What Baby doesn't know is that Li'l Dog is basically fucking every gal sent by his papa, and passing around the available poon to his fellow judge pals (including Manning's character, Chuko).

Thinking that her friend is fucking her way to the car show title, Shy steps up and decides to offer up the pussy for possible votes. This leads us to our first sex scene:

Scene 1: Shy Love, Nick Manning
Taking place in the backroom of the car show, and featuring a great deal of edited material montaged together, this is a disjointed, distracting first bit of bonk. The foreplay is forceful as Manning is all over Love like a hungry hobo on a neck bone, and his cunnilingus is rough and finger fondling fierce. Shy gives quite the blowjob, and her helping of head is one of the best moments in the scene. Once Manning gets his pork into the piehole, the random man screams start coming. Before long, all we hear is Nick knocking up against Shy (in the straight, doggy, and reverse cowgirl position), skin slapping against flesh as the nonsensical name-calling continues. Finally, after a few more jump cuts, we end up with Nick's full-blown pop – complete with commentary - all over Shy's face and mouth.

Yes, this is hardcore sex. Yes, it does have its erotic moments. True, for all his false bravado, Manning can apply crank to crack with expertise. But this feels more like a violation than a bit of tawdry titillation. Shy saves it though, proving that she has the sexual skills to sell even the most middling bit of boastful balling. Score: 6 out of 10.

Scene 2: Lola, Marcos Leon
Our introduction to Li'l Dog is as underwhelming as that sorry ass nickname implies. This juvenile Jalapeno popper is just not in the league of other male porn stars and it shows in his half-assed performance. After Lola licks his balls and sucks his wang, Mr. Leon goes straight for the slit, never once stopping to snack on said snatch for the benefit of his partner. After a little straight, spoon and reverse cowgirl (with Lola tossing in some V to M to try and save the sexiness), we get a wobbly, wet load launch that barely makes it onto the babe's chest. Though she does everything she can to ratchet up the raunch in the scene, Lola is fighting a losing battle. Marcos is miserable as a paramour, fucking like he's just out of high school and finally found a girl who would give him some sympathy booty. This is 'wham bam' without the 'thank you, ma'am' and makes for the worst scene in the film. Score: 2 out of 10.

Shy's Jasmine learns of the judge fixing done by Li'l Dog when she and her best friend/future fuck buddy Yo-Yo (Tommy Gunn) visit Chuko (Manning) at his house. There, Baby and another girl are getting ready to rock his rod for some contest consideration.

Scene 3: Jennifer Luv, Olivia O'Lovely, Nick Manning
Three ways are usually measured by how effective the ménage actually is. One crappy cog in this trio of tooling and the entire enterprise falls apart into a jumbled joke. Thankfully, all three performers here are first rate, making this marriage of lesbianism and log induction that much more successful. We start with the usual dueling head, followed by a little doggy with additional same sex tit sucking. Naturally, whenever there are two mouths available for V or A to M, both ladies partake of said juicy joint with glee. Nick seems to switch from one hound helping to another, giving time for the gals to get it on with each other while he's plowing another pussy, bow-wow style. After a final fuck facet of reverse cowgirl, and a welcome diversion of anal spooning (the only ASS SEX in the whole film), Nick delivers a diatribe filled ball brining on both maidens mouths, leading to a sensual snowball kiss between the ladies.

Devinn's camera is not too intrusive, not too distant in this fairly decent tantric triple play. Manning does what he does best – i.e., provide powerful peter – while it is up to Jennifer and Olivia to tweak the titillation. They do so very nicely, making this one of the better scenes in the set. Score: 7 out of 10.

Scene 4: Repeat Clip Collection from Scene 1
If it had been shorter, say, a couple of minutes or so, this revisit of the first fuck feature of the film would nary require a mention. But since director Lane lingers on it for quite a while, only removing random, ancillary material, it feels like an attempt to flush out the rather paltry running time with additional antics. It doesn't really work, since we've already seen the sequence before, and as a third slice of Manning's mannerisms, we are starting to grow less accepting and more aggravated by his aural assholiness. No score here.

Scene 5: Yasmine Vega, Marcos Leon
Going two for two in the "what the Hell" department, this masturbation scene quickly follows the repeat of Scene 1 and starts Latin Car Show Queens on a downward spiral of asexual stasis that it barely recovers from. Marcos lays back, lets Yasmine snuggle in his underdeveloped arms, and watches as she fingers and fidgets with her private parts. Ms. Vega is not very adept at selling self-stimulation to the home audience. She believes in the random reinsertion of digits up in her dirty bits as the height of hardcore autoeroticism. Mr. Leon tries to boost the arousal ante by grabbing Yasmine's fabulously fake tits, and suckling on her neck. As jack-off exposés goes, this sequence is docile and just not appealing. Score: 2 out of 10.

Turns out that the head honcho of the car shows is livid when he discovers what his son has been up to. He promises Shy and Jennifer that the final contest will be on the up and up, and they patch up their rocky relationship (the stress of the pageant put a temporary kibosh on their camaraderie). When the voting is over, both Shy and Jennifer win, and Shy decides to celebrate by fucking the fudge out of her friend Yo-Yo.

Scene 6: Shy Love, Tommy Gunn
Here it is, the scene we've waiting 60 some odd minutes to see. Shy is finally matched with a guy who compliments, not condemns, her and the results are incredibly erotic. Tommy is one of those overworked muscle men who seems more blatantly brawny than gals (or guys, for that matter) would actually like. Yet he does gel perfectly with Shy, coming across as both sensitive and strong. The combination of Love and Gunn really gives off the vibe that we're watching two lovers express their deep physical desire for each other. The shower setting also amplifies the passion, as nothing makes the naked body sparkle in sensual seduction more than random droplets of water, or liquid slicked skin.

The couple start with foreplay, move on to mutual oral (blowjob with ball action first, a trip to Connie the Linguist second) and then enter into some very passionate porking. After a little cowgirl and some spooning, Tommy tosses his sack seed all over Shy's stomach. The resulting release caps off a very sizzling session of stick and lick. Tommy's brawn and Shy's slenderness blend well and they have great chemistry here. Had all the sex in Latin Car Show Queens been of the caliber celebrated by this couple, this would be a fantastic fuck fest. Sadly, this is the highlight of a rather hampered helping of hardcore. Score: 9 out of 10.

Again, the problem here is with tone and tendencies. Director Lane really gives the non-sharking scenes a sparkle and an intimacy that draws us into the personal problems the characters are having. Though the acting is still pretty amateurish, especially in the Manning/Marcos arena, there is an authenticity to the Baby/Jasmine and Jasmine/Yo-Yo relationships that lingers on while the naked canoodling is occurring. This is why Latin Car Show Queens feels more like a regular film with hardcore sex inserts than a prototypical porn title. Had Lane chosen her male co-stars more carefully, avoiding the noise, and sticking with the kind of dicking Mr. Gunn does best, she could have avoided a great many of her issues here. No matter how amazing the narrative is, steamy suck and fuck can usually counter it with carnality. But the limp loads being dropped here are just too uninspiring for words.

The Video:
As is typical with most Wicked product, the visual aspect of Latin Car Show Queens is pretty impressive. Offered in a 1.33:1 full screen sensation that gives us great fleshtones and excellent, detail delivering contrasts, we can see every wrinkle, mole and bit of razor burn on our stars. Lane loves color and her lowriders really radiate off of the screen (too bad we see so little of them). When we get to Li'l Dog's house, the colors seems a bit faded, as if the lighting available was somewhat lax during this part of the production. Still, overall, this title has a real feature film feel (even though it was shot on digital video and transferred over) and the result is a very professional, very appealing picture.

The Audio:
Lane also is one of the few directors who understands the concept of properly MIXING her movies. Instead of merely layering on the electro-Latino hip hop techno music right over the moaning and groaning, the Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo Surround presentation here integrates it into the overall soundscape, meaning we get a nice balance between accompaniment and aardvarking. All the dialogue is understandable and clear, and there are several atmospheric elements that put the channels to good use (crowd noise, sex sounds, etc) in this excellent decibel display.

The Extras:
Wicked always loads on the bonus features when it comes to DVD production, and Latin Car Show Queens is no exception. We get the standard galleries, DVD catalog, Promotional Materials (including those Wicked convention preview reels the company is so fond of fitting onto their discs) and lots of DVD-Rom content.

The two best added features are the 'Behind the Scenes' featurette and the bonus scene. During the nearly 30 minute look into the making of the movie, we learn how Nick Manning has/had a crush on Shy Love, how director Devinn gets down in on the action, camera in hand, and how Nick's noisiness has become a trademark of sorts for the actor (we even get some handy subtitles to translate his venting and vocalizing). There is lots of sex scattered throughout this backstage saga, so it tends to play like a highlight reel of the ribaldry available in the film as well as a peek behind the production curtain.

We also get the following additional sequence:

Bonus Scene: Shy Love, Jennifer Drake
From: The Collector (2003)
Directed by: Brad Armstrong
Acts Performed: Tit Sucking, Kissing, Fondling, Cunnilingus, Fingering, V to M, Salad Tossing, Anal Tongue Fucking, Silver Vibrator Action, Black Vibrator Action, Dildo V to M.

Until the toys come traipsing out, this is a very tame scene, even by girl/girl standards. You can tell right away that this is a Brad Armstrong production, as there is a focus on fancy sets, mood lighting and clever camera trickery to emphasize the sin and sizzle in a scene. Too bad it just doesn't work here. Shy and Jennifer give it a good Sapphic attempt, but they just can't lift the lesbianism to a level beyond basic distraction. While it's nice to see these gals in action, the action is not necessarily worth seeing. Score: 3.5 out of 10.

Final Thoughts:
With a spectrum so wide that it can encompass everything from the rawest gonzo workout to a luxuriant and sensual near softcore compilation, the world of adult entertainment is certainly varied. And somewhere in the middle of all the fetish and particular proclivity titles, the star vehicles and the ensemble groupings, lies something like Latin Car Show Queens. While the Latina facet alone may get some guys grabbing at their groins immediamente, it is safe to say that anyone approaching this hoping that it's hot as Habanera will be sadly unsatisfied. This is a borderline call, but a rental would be better than a recommendation, especially when the Disco Dirge Peter Meter can only manage a mediocre 5 out of 10 for a score. Couples will definitely love every minute of this mild, safe and sensitive showcase. So a Cohabitation Certification is warranted and awarded. It is never fun to fault an adult filmmaker for trying to make something more substantial out of the typical title than a barely coherent set of scenes. But Latin Car Show Queens illustrates that if you focus too much on the filmic, and not the fucking, the results will be more inconsequential than interesting.