30 Rock: A XXX Parody

I love the current trend of parodies. It's a re-creation of culture in a way that both celebrates that which is popular and celebrates sexuality. In some ways it's immature ? in a good way. It proves that what we consider to be cultural institutions are not above comment and criticism. Though I must admit that it helps to have some background in the piece being parodied, 30 Rock as a XXX Parody seems to be immensely entertaining. With a solid cast and from a good studio, it looks to be as much a winner as the rest of the parodies making waves out there.

There is a digital copy on this disc, which is nice, though my computer seemed to have some serious trouble with the menu setup. No matter what I did, it just made this buzzing sound and didn't want to do much of anything, seeming to get lost in the chapter stops. I put in the second disc to get the digital copy to watch it as an alternative. This killed the menu function, but it was better than nothing.

So as someone who doesn't watch 30 Rock, most of these jokes are probably lost on me. That's okay. I'm not paid to review the plot lines, am I? Wait, I'm not paid at all...

Ashlynn Brooke's scene is a decent one here, though the camera angles get to be a bit stale. I expected more variety in that sense, as surely they have more than one camera on set. She also seems to try to use eye contact to look alluring during the blowjob sequence, but it just doesn't come off at all. During the penetration sequences, the camera is just too tight and too low to be effective either. This seems to be a growing - and disturbing - trend in adult fare: namely, the tendency to have the camera too low, especially in reverse cowgirl, so that it's mostly a genital shot with some breast and head above it. The alternative is seemingly a ceiling shot. Surely these directors haven't all lost their minds, have they? Don't obsess on genital shots! We can see it, and change camera angles and distance repeatedly to get that emphasis you want, not this! The whole point of reverse cowgirl is to capture the female body. And too low of a camera angle just fucks that all up.

The penetration bits just seem monotonous throughout this scene, as Ashlynn's acting can only carry this so far, and the camera angles being all wrong just makes it boring. Even a mediocre money shot, with a lingering close-up, going between the genital goings-on and Ashlynn's face, before slowly wandering to a medium shot - which seems to be all arms and legs - and a dribbling cumshot on Ashlynn's ass. Too close, too many shadows.

I want directors to ask themselves what they're doing in films. The directors who are known are generally known for the quality work they do. But what makes quality? Just having a theme to go off of isn't nearly enough, as they seem to think here. Make good shots that are well lot and well performed and you'll have a winner. Do I need to just go do this myself?

At least Amy Ried shows up in the scene to cheer me up. That's always a good thing, though the fact that she's interacting with someone with such strange hair - again, it must be something from the original series - is a bit off-putting, back to the early-80's days when it seemed much of the male talent looked like Gallagher. Did I forget to mention that Amy's nice to look at? It's a decent performance here, though again, the angles are limited, and this time so are the positions. A shorter scene, thankfully with the guy's hair mostly out of the frame. A big tit shot in the end. Not bad.

I wanted to like this film quite a bit, but again, I don't know the original show, so it makes it hard for me to know if this was an effective parody or not. This would not have been my ideal choice of cast by any means, though, as Ashlynn Brooke just has never quite done it for me and I don't like Lisa Ann. If you're a fan of the sitcom, you'll probably love this XXX parody of 30 Rock. If not, maybe go pick out a parody from something you know.