Bikini Valley Car Wash (2020)
Ron Jeremy is the best actor in this movie.
Ok…I have to admit…when I saw this pop up on Amazon Prime I scrolled past. Then I came back to it. A few minutes later I was watching it, thinking “I am totally not watching this movie…and no matter what, I’ll never write a review on a movie named Bikini Valley Car Wash.”
I’m writing a review on a movie named Bikini Valley Car Wash.
So first, let me say this is not the movie for everyone. There are a lot of scenes with girls in bikinis, a minute of two of nudity, and sexual language. But the levels of all of that are no more than you would find in an 80s film like Porky’s - the spiritual ancestor of this movie.
A lot of people will not care for this. One of the very few reviews on it reads:
Oh, man. This was truly bad.
Horrible writing and comedy, choppy editing, atrocious sound design, dreadful acting, long ass shots with no purpose at all, unnecessary nudity in most scenes and the occasional appearance of a stuffed bear that’s only purpose is to jerk off.
And these are barely some of the things wrong with this. I genuinely can’t mention one single thing this atrocity did right. There’s no excuse to create such a bad film.
Javier didn’t like the movie. I thought it was pretty fun.
So before you throw the inevitable tomatoes…
The storyline of Bikini Valley Car Wash is pretty straightforward. Amanda (Avalon Fair - whose only film credit seems to be BVCW) and her stripper roommate, Brittany (Sadie Bentley - another newcomer) are BFFs, living in a small apartment in Silicon Valley. When the rent for their apartment suddenly rises and Amanda’s grandfather gets caught up an evil developer’s scheme to foreclose on Gramps’ house, the two need to make some big bucks quick.
After quickly ruling out prostitution (no, really - that was a scene), they decide to enlist Brittany’s stripper friends to run a nighttime bikini car wash on the car wash lot owned by Amanda’s uncle, Ron Jeremy (Boondock Saints, 54, and a few art films in the 70s).
Got it? That’s pretty much the story.
So is there anything redeeming in this movie? Plenty.
First, some of the acting is pretty wooden, but I can give that a pass with Fair and Bentley, given that it was their first movie. The late Mike Dinsmore is, however, pretty solid as Lance, a smoked-out 80s retread. His chemistry is particularly good with Kevin Carscallen, who plays two roles: the geeky Wikiboy and the creepy Demon (a kid who hangs out at bus stops reciting classic lines from 70s and 80s films). The intergenerational play between Lance and Wikiboy is fun:
Lance: “This (boombox) is a classic! It has an original tape deck"!”
Wikiboy: “Great…great….uhhhh…what’s a tape deck?”
That gets to what the movie is really about.
Once you get past the obvious goofiness of this film, it becomes clear that the writer-director, Jordon Ghanma, wants this to be a Tarantinoesque genre call-back. He’s not Tarantino and this isn’t Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, but it has its moments. Lance and Wikiboy are fun, the movie is full of classic film lifts and nods (especially from Airplane and Fast Times at Ridgemont High), there are some humorous 80s vs 20s comparisons, and there is even a little social commentary about Google, Apple, and the high-tech industry.
One other thing…and I’ll try to put it as tastefully as I can…
This is a movie about girls in bikinis. It is all about sexualization and stereotype. At the same time, the women in those bikinis do not have porn star or Hollywood starlet proportions. They have stretch marks, a few are overweight, and they are delightfully “normal” women. Don’t get me wrong: these are pretty girls - but they are most striking because they are real. These are not your 1980s car wash bikiniettes.
Would I watch this again? Maybe. This isn’t going to be enshrined in the Hollywood Hall of Fame, but it is descent for what it is: a call back to movies of its kind in the 80s and early 90s, with a little 2020 sarcasm and sensibility sprinkled in.
Javier gave it a half-star. Javier needs to lighten up.
You can catch BVCW HERE on Amazon.
Two out of Five Hot Wax Jobs.
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