Longshot (2001)

[pajamagirl321 1]

Longshot!!!

 

Does nobody remember it?? It had just about every late 90s-early 2000s pop star and was written and produced my the father of boy bands, Lou Pearlman. I remember being 11 and nearly pissing myself when i saw all the cameos. I absolutely think this deserves a spot.

[ShannEffect 18]

This movie was written by Lou Pearlman, the guy who brought us N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys and a lot of the other bubblegum pop groups from the late 90's to early 00's. He's in jail now, but he left us this movie, which is completely effing insane.

 

It's ultimately just a promotional tool for those groups, but the story line in it is amazing.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201694/

 

The summary:

 

Jack Taylor is a Beverly Hills gigolo who is blackmailed by a corrupt and powerful businessman, Laszlo Pryce. He is forced to seduce a wealthy widow in NYC to obtain insider information so his blackmailer can profit. Jack desperately tries to prevent harm coming to his little brother Alex, but unexpectedly falls for the woman he is forced to betray. Now, he must choose.

 

The thing is, the dvd case implied that this is a movie about a high school kid who wants to play basketball and get the girl so I was shocked and delighted that I got to see this whole other story line starring Paul Sorvino, Antonio Sabato Jr and Hunter Tylo.

 

Shoehorned into what is already a hot mess of a movie is every group that Pearlman was managing at the time making bizarre cameos, some of them making great puns about their band names and basically winking at the camera.

[GwendolynMarie 1]

Lord almighty this is a BAD film. How this hasn't been made into a podcast, I don't know. Probably because it's only available on dvd.

 

The acting is so bad in this, it makes From Justin to Kelly look like it's Canne Film level.

 

Also, it's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's first acting role!

[sfwaccount 0]

I'm gonna copy and paste what I wrote on another forum

 

This might be a little long, but bear with me

 

So I was taking a trip down musical nostalgia lane recently and my golden age was the late 90's, the peak of boy bands (Don't judge...alright judge). So in listening to the music I got to thinking about Lou Pearlman and the creepy accusations about him and various members of his groups like Backstreet Boys and LFO, along with the Ponzi scheme that landed him in jail, where he served time until his death a couple of months ago. I kinda knew the gist of what happened but I wanted to get details. My curiosity led me to the Vanity Fair article "Mad about the Boys" which chronicles Pearlman's odyssey from a blimp enthusiast to music mogul to fugitive http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/11/pearlman200711

 

In the article there's a section about how Pearlman, encircled with lawsuits from the groups he helped and hurt and losing money fast, wanted to venture into Hollywood with the crime romantic-thriller/teen-comedy/??? Longshot

 

And this movie...oh, boy. I'll save the details but the story is insanely incomprehensible. Jack - a personal trainer/gigolo (uh-huh) gigolates with the wrong wife, and her husband gives him a mission to seduce a widow into giving insider information on her dead husband's business. So Jack has to do this or the guy will kill his little brother, whose useless storyline about being failed basketball player/aspiring spy is thrown in to coincide with his brother's but wraps the film up at the end.

 

The story is muddled - not knowing who to pander to, the editing atrocious, the acting stinks but what I can't get over is who all is in the film. Paul Sorvino,The Rock, and Gilbert Gottfried were all in it in addition to others but the biggest surprise of all were cameos from boy band members that had sued him (including one co-pilot who needed to get the airplane controls..."in sync"...).

 

Given how Lou Pearlman's schemes were, it's weird that he would write a film like this.

[sfwaccount 0]

 

I mean, just look at this movie poster. Do you think what I just described is portrayed in it?