I Want Candy

Film students Joe and Baggy have been working for three years on their first feature, The Love Storm. When their tutor (played with deliberate awkwardness by Mackenzie Crook and a dead ringer for one of The Modern Parents from Viz) tells them that their diplomas will instead depend on a two-minute short, they're heartbroken. Best friend Lila encourages them to go it alone. "London's a 20 minute drive away and it's crammed full of film companies desperate for ideas," she says. They must be desperate indeed, or nobody would have touched I Want Candy even with somebody else's barge pole.

What follows is a mishmash of all the usual poor wannabe filmmaker clichés: encounters with ruthless money men, alterations to the story, the addition of more sex, producers lying to the cast, making do with people's homes for locations and somehow finding time for improbable romance.

We are advised that pornography is different from other films because it sticks to a rigid formula, yet one could set one's watch by the plot 'twists' in this film, and it doesn't take cum in the face to leave those involved looking embarrassed at the end. The only cast member who acquits herself with any dignity is Carmen Electra (as much sought-after porn star Candy Fiveways) and that's because she clearly never deigns to take it seriously, having been in worse.

To say that it's not supposed to be taken seriously is to miss the point. Comedy can be charming when we're laughing with the characters; it can also, like it or not, be quite satisfying when we're laughing at the characters; but when we're laughing at ourselves for having been foolish enough to attend in the first place, that's not good.

The basic idea of building a wannabe filmmaker story around the adult entertainment industry is not a bad one. The writers have done at least a little bit of research and it's nice to see those involved in the industry treated with respect. Hints at a backstory involving a dispute between Candy and executive producer Doug suggest that there's a grown-up story there waiting to be told, but that only makes it more frustrating that we have to sit through this drivel. Even those who go to see it hoping for a bit of nudity will be disappointed. In the end it doesn't matter how big the producer's ideas are because the film just won't stand up.