I took some time out of my very busy porn schedule the other day to take a look at “Island Fever 2,” Digital Playground’s Joone-directed “masterpiece” (according to Playgirl Magazine and Nightmoves—AdultDVDEmpire drops the “master” from “piece” in favor of “artistic”).

Before I offer up my take on this “shot on mini-35mm” film/video, let me share some of the review-snippets that appear on the front of the box:

“A cinematic masterpiece… the most gorgeous porn ever made!!” (Playgirl Magazine)

“Joone has created a classic erotic masterpiece with Island Fever 2… A 5-star must-see!!” (Nightmoves)

“5 Stars… A truly artistic piece of Adult erotica” (AdultDVDEmpire.com)

“Island Fever 2 is the perfect sequel!” (StunningCurves.com)

“Editor’s Choice… A classic you won’t want to miss. Own it!” (Adam Film World)

No offense, but did these people watch the same movie I screened? Am I missing something here? Were they given some free crack with their screeners that I didn’t receive?

I'm sorry. I guess it was rude to make that 'crack' comment. So instead, what I’m going to do is forget what these other people said about “Island Fever 2"and just make my own observations. At least, I'll going to try to do that.

First off, let me say that no matter what kind of flakey ingrate Tera Patrick turned out to be in many people’s eyes—not everyone’s eyes—but seemingly in many people’s eyes, I’d still give someone’s left nut, maybe my own, to fuck her. She is one fine piece of ass. She’s about as sweet-looking as eye-candy gets. Granted, she doesn’t exactly fuck with wild abandon, but if it were my dick in there, I could easily forgive her that little flaw. And she looks especially fuck-able in those lush, jungle-like settings and on those black sand beaches.

Having said that, I’m afraid the rest of what I’m about to say isn’t going to be as flattering.

I would probably have better things to say about the videography in this flick if one of two things had taken place: Either 1) Joone didn’t opt for a (faux) letterboxed aspect ratio for this release; or 2) Joone had shot the movie with an eye towards framing the shots so that they would end up properly composed for a letterboxed version. Here’s what I think he did—I think he made the letterbox decision in post. And I don’t think it’s a true letterbox. I think the picture is masked to look like it’s letterboxed. The problem in doing this is that in many shots people’s feet and/or heads are weirdly cut off. I think you get the idea. It makes the composition in many of the shots look truly amateur. Don’t get me wrong, I’m confident Joone can frame-up a shot with good composition. And when I imagined what the shots would look like in full-screen, I realized they were properly composed… for a full-screen shot.

The soundtrack is empty. I mean EMPTY. It’s like a silent movie with music added. Making it worse, the musical selections begin to gnaw at you in an annoying way. They gnawed at me, that’s for sure. The flick has all these pretty montages on beaches and in front of waterfalls and what do we hear? Music. Period. As far as moans and groans and ooohs and aaahs go, I think I heard them briefly about twice in the whole movie. In a nutshell, there’s almost no ambient or production sound anywhere on this soundtrack. How much more lush that scene in front of the waterfall would be if the music was balanced against the sound of the cascading water? Plenty more. Even more so if we could hear the lustful sounds of humans having sex.

The editing is very repetitive. Rarely does the editor dwell on any shots. The camera seems like its always moving, and so the editor has little choice but to too quickly cut or dissolve to the next shot.

The sex seems, for the most part, to be without much passion. It’s pretty… but dull. While all the female flesh in this movie is quite easy to look at, none of the girls seem particularly “into” what they’re doing.

The scene with Stormy kind of bothered me because of its setting. This is “Island Fever.” The only island I can think of with a big dry lake bed on it like the one Stormy graces is Australia. My guess is that this scene was shot later as filler. Perhaps it was shot at El Mirage Dry Lake Bed in the Antelope Valley. If not, certainly some similar, Southern California dry lake bed or salt flat. It’s not that a dry lake bed isn’t a cool location. It’s just that it doesn’t seem to fit the lush, Pacific island motif that’s in the rest of the movie.

Digital Playground claims the “Island Fever 2” trailer is the most watched in their history. I can easily believe that. With the kind of lush locales and beautiful women who grace the scenes in this movie, cutting a popular trailer should have been a no-brainer.

While I was watching “Island Fever 2,” it occurred to me how this movie could be best used, at least segments of it-- it could be used for interstitials. That's right, breaking it up into short pieces and used for interstitials on The Playboy Channel or some other cable or PPV outlet. If you’re unfamiliar with the term "interstitial," it’s filler that is sometimes used to go between other programming.

In all, I was disappointed with “Island Fever 2.” I think it could indeed have qualified as “gorgeous porn.” Maybe not “the most gorgeous porn ever made,” but certainly quite gorgeous nonetheless. (I haven't watched enought gorgeous porn to make that kind of judgement call anyway.) But given the poor use of letterboxing and the empty, incomplete soundtrack, it doesn’t qualify as such. It simply doesn’t appeal to enough of the senses.

Oh well, I may have gotten my last invite to a Digital Playground function. But I’m one of those guys who calls ‘em the way I see’s ‘em.

And a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.


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