Movie Review: Finding Bliss

FINDING BLISS 2/4
Phase 4 Films, Rated R

While biopics, even when fictionalized, can be a big bore when focusing on an uneventful life, others may tilt the other way into too-much-information territory. Such is the case with Finding Bliss, a giggly gross-out pornographic romance delving into writer/director Julie Davis’ early days in Hollywood, apprenticing as an editor of adult movies.

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Conceived as if seeking guilty pleasure absolution from her prospective audience for her Faustian bargain with the adult entertainment industry in order to raise money for her less X-Rated subsequent films, Finding Bliss goes for a more daffy than deviant approach.

Leelee Sobieski is Jody, a recent Ivy League grad with a consuming obsession to be a big-time director in Hollywood, but who can’t seem to get beyond directing traffic on movie lots. Jody finally lands a job as an editor at a porn video company called Grind Productions, but the clueless space cadet takes an awfully long time to figure out where she actually is.

Leelee Sobieski stars in Finding Bliss

Stuck in a job veering between creeping her out and secretly sexually exciting her, Jody tolerates needling from Jeff (Matt Davis) the cranky in-house filmmaker, in order to sneak around the studio after hours to make her own movie, which the entire gang of Grind porn actors signs up for, along with an aspiring method actress (Denise Richards).

Hard as she might try, Davis fails to project the sense of baffled innocence over the multiple hardcore sex acts in this movie that she’d like to, with her cartoonish Disney style approach to outright raunch. Some subjects are best left to more candidly exposing eyes, and not just physically, but psychologically as well.

Despite the stars doing their best to inject sensitivity into their beyond bizarre roles, you know a movie about porn is in trouble when the biggest shocker of all is Jesse James as himself in a fully clothed cameo, caught finding his own bliss when turning up grinning with an overly bosomy babe on each arm at an AVN Adult Entertainment Awards gala, also known as the Oscars of porn.”

Finding Bliss: Get a room. Or better yet, the entire hotel.