HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

HOW BOBBY BECAME 'A' STUDENT

Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 23, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

The sexual double-standard endures, and in the movies has produced a peculiar subgenre of softcore-fantasy films whose most interesting aspect is that they are made at all. Beginning with Private Lessons in 1981, the business of attractive women deflowering teenage boys has drawn audiences to tedious movies at a surprising rate. My Tutor is the latest.
Plot details of these films vary within a narrow range, and My Tutor is conventional: A high-school student in Southern California has flunked French, which imperils his acceptance to Yale ("I had to pull a lot of strings to get him in," says Dad), which means in turn that the "best French tutor in the city" has been engaged for irregular-verb duty over the summer. Student is Bobby, 17. Teacher is Terry, 29. Ooo-lala.

Bobby approaches the whole project with considerable trepidation, as he and a pal had planned to use the summer, by a varity of schemes, to escape from virginity. These plans, which depend heavily on commercial transactions, keep going awry.

Happily, Terry turns out to be the kind of French teacher who takes midnight swims in the raw. She also takes aerobic dancing, and footage of her in leotards, bumping and grinding down at the spa, are used as filler whenever the action flags. This is more frequently than one might imagine at first; films such as My Tutor are straight-line affairs, frustration, frustration, frustration, despair, jackpot, and it's tough to get a full 90 minutes without the padding.

Anyway, Bobby has a wonderful summer, and so does Terry. The softcore consummation scene is a gauzy triumph, and by the end of the film Bobby is fully prepared to attend the college of his choice.

Though My Tutor contains many scenes meant to provide comic relief, there is only one that works: Hired to deflower Bobby in the early going, the local drive-in slattern is caught flagrante delicto in a well-used backseat by her fiancee, the leader of a motorcycle gang. "He hates it when I do this," she says to Bobby, and one wants to love this movie.

Otherwise, alas, My Tutor is witless. It seems to take forever for Bobby to learn to conjugate, and he's pretty slow at French, too. As for the double standard, note that simple role reversal -- older man deflowering teenage girl -- produces not a softcore sex comedy, but a crime drama. And that's a different genre altogether.

Movie Review

My Tutor (R) *

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CAST

Caren Kaye, Matt Lattanzi, Kevin McCarthy, Clark Brandon, Bruce Bauer

CREDITS

Director: George Bowers

Producer: Marilyn J. Tenser

Screenwriter: Joe Roberts

Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg

Music: Webster Lewis

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A Crown International Pictures release

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Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex

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At Palm Springs, Miracle, Byron/Carlyle, 163rd Street, Ambassador, Cutler Ridge, Dadeland, Kendale, Gateway, Pompano, Southland (Fort Lauderdale), Plaza, Broward Mall, Coral Springs Movie Center, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.