Mutual Needs

I was pleasantly surprised when I viewed "Mutual Needs." It's a Playboy produced movie, so you pretty much know what you're gonna get--hot girls and a wafer-thin plot. This movie reminded me a lot of another Playboy movie about corporate warfare, "The Corporate Ladder." It's no coincidence this flick and TCL were both made in 1997.

The movie starts out innocently enough--a man gets dumped by his girlfriend shortly before his 10th annual high school reunion. Obviously afraid of being the laughingstock of the event, he rushes out an hires a hooker to go to the reunion with him. In no time, the hooker, played effortlessly by Rochelle Swanson, makes her way through the party, introducing herself as the man's wife. It works like a charm! In fact, the guy lands a cushy $120,000-a-year job working for one of his former high school classmates. Now, Charlene wants payment. That's where the fun begins.

In a cross between "The Corporate Ladder" with a hint of "Scorned", Charlene makes life a living hell for this poor man, forging loan contracts and running up astronomically high credit bills. Soon enough, however, her past catches up with her.

The sex scenes in this movie were relatively short and seemed to be placed correctly, unlike some other movies of this genre where some of the sex scenes seem to have little to do with the plot.

It drags on in a few places, but not enough to say, "There's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back." Richard Grieco, a familiar-sounding C-list actor, gets top billing in this movie. Gotta have that star power!!

Sex: C+ Women: B+ Story: B Overall: B