“Glee” porn parody both is and ain’t

I hate to start this review with a backhanded compliment, so I’ll wait until the next paragraph. In the meantime, “This Ain’t Glee XXX” is really well done.

I did not expect to like this movie for a number of reasons.

1. “Glee” is a show about a high school glee club with several elaborate song and dance numbers per episode and I could not imagine such things could be pulled off within porn’s limitations in budget, time, and motivation.

2. “Glee” is a show that is mostly popular with teenagers and people who do not happen to be straight men (although I like it because I have an expansive and complicated worldview), or it might be more correct to say that the themes of “Glee” might not be as universal to straight men – the main consumers of mainstream porn – as they are to others.

2a. And if so, why not make “This Ain’t Freaks And Geeks XXX,” a show that is lousy with pornable content straight men could identify with, like Rush, unrequited hetero crushes, geekery, Canadians masquerading as Americans, and casual drug use?

3. “Glee”‘s major characters include a man in a wheelchair, a heavyset black woman, and a gay man, all of whom are mostly or entirely whitewashed out of the porn version. It would have been a bold act of splitting the difference for director Braun to throw in a bi/interracial/wheelchair threeway. To the tune of “Red Barchetta.”

Studio: Hustler
Director: Axel Braun
Starring: Chad Diamond, Andy San Dimas, Scarlett Fay, Tucker Slain, Tara Lynn Foxx, Nicki Hunter, Miko Sinz

The glee club is under threat. Earnest, hardworking, and amicable glee club director Mr. Shu (Chad Diamond, an earnest, hardworking, and amicable performer who until earlier this year was living in his car) must come up with a song performance list to show the principal (brownfaced James Bartholet with a Pakistani accent) so that the club can survive. In this way, the porn version has just as unlikely a plot as the original.

Meanwhile, Shu must contend with the arch, jealous, Type A cheerleading coach, Sue Scott (Nicki Hunter in predator mode), the “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” schoolgirl fantasies of Andy San Dimas, and his own crush on the school guidance counselor (the winsome Scarlett Fay).

Shot, miked, and lit exceptionally well, “Glee XXX” looks really good, and the casting of the major female parts is wonderful. Unlike a lot of parodies, “Glee XXX” benefits from a cast familiar with the source material and that, furthermore, knows how to act.

“We’ve actually rehearsed this for a few weeks,” said Braun, who seemed as surprised as I was.

Andy San Dimas is spot-on as the goody-goody soprano. Doubtless she draws on a fresh reserve of sense memory, having only been out of high school herself for a few years (this makes me shudder sometimes). She isn’t afraid to be silly or throw herself into character, which makes her fun to watch.

And Scarlett Fay was perfectly cast as a wholesome flibbertigibbet whose nervousness can only be fucked out of her. Perhaps it is out of context, but Don’t get fake boobs, Scarlett Fay.

Accepting that “Glee XXX” is very well done but risk-averse corporate porn nonetheless, perhaps the wildest scene was a strap-on interlude between Nicki Hunter and Miko Sinz in a toilet stall. In the original, Sinz’ character is also Asian and is dating the paraplegic man. Perhaps Hustler had to compensate for this by making her a lesbian toilet and strap-on aficianado.

The music, three numbers based on Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by The Police (the latter was the most apt), seem to have been recorded by professionals and lip-synced by the cast. It is unclear from the credits or the backstage footage if the professionals and the cast were the same people. I asked a few cast members point blank if they were the ones singing but I received evasive answers.

In any case, the songs weren’t Weird Al clever, but they weren’t Puff Daddy shitty, either, and were considerably better than a lot of recent porn music, save for what appears in Dave Naz or Burning Angel videos.

Marc Star’s script was both smart and accommodating of what he had to work with (which made it smarter), and the backstage videos, especially of Tara Lynn Fox, were charming. An odd bonus was when Braun used his Lloyd’s of London-insured fingers to squeeze TLF’s pimple.

At the end of the day, if there is a lot of sex in a porn movie and the people performing it look good doing it, the porn movie is a success, and so “This Ain’t Glee XXX” certainly is.

So it is and it ain’t “Glee.”

• Buy “This Ain’t Glee” here

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: See my “Glee XXX” on the set story here
See also: Hustler