I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Meet Monica Velour is important because it plays off many American anxieties about sex, which may as well be a four-letter word in American society. Sex workers are invisible in this culture, hardly seen as people, let alone portrayed as complex human beings with lives outside from their current/former job. Second chances are hard to come by and second acts are even harder to pull off—and also taboo to talk about. So here is an endearing, smart film, about Monica Velour, a former Miss January, evoking all this and more, not didactic at all, and with all the markers of a cult classic.The basic plot: Tobe (Dustin Ingram) is lanky nerdy-but-hot tall drink of water, "unconventionally" handsome young man, who lives with his granddad and finds out his triple-X celeb obsession/idol, Monica Velour (Kim Cattrall) is performing a rare live show at a skin parlor some states over. The graduate, no other life direction in mind, answers the call to adventure by taking his grad present (a frankfurter truck) and setting off to both sell the truck and woo his woman. You know, the kind of open-ended epic in the Campbell follow-your-bliss style—a little like a spiked version of Little Miss Sunshine, another film I love. As others have noted, the opening credits sequence is *incredible* —a visual feast full of puns and double entendres—and sets a high bar that the film mostly meets. Tobe's affection for Monica is good-natured, almost innocent; he lovingly maintains his treasure trove, scrapbooking-as-craft and vision-boarding, the purity of his intentions/ idealization of sex in general (and, to be sure, Monica in specific) beaming out of his pores. Tobe's gravitation to Monica (as opposed to "someone his own age") is almost natural given his "old" soul, which is something perhaps mainstream audiences don't understand. He's going after windmills and we root for him because it's more devotion than lust that motivates him.Monica turns out to be more tarnished and tired than perhaps Tobe or any "real life" man would want; her starpower and earning potential is on the wane, as she inevitably marches toward her next status an aging woman in a superficial society. Monica's role is written with depth and with no apologies for her past or current life, defying stereotypes and victimhood—she's a 3-dimensional character. Cattrall plays her really well, down to facial minutiae. My favorite moment of hers has got to be when she says, rejected after applying for a conventional job at a beauty parlor, "God, you screw a few hundred guys and the whole world turns against you." That's our unforgiving culture in a nutshell, but the film doesn't sermonize or even "take sides" between Tobe and Monica: sympathetic to both, we're just being let into their star-crossed worlds for a little while.Tobe's idea that he can "help" or "save" Monica gets its rightful interrogation; and Monica's problems with receiving help and her jadedness in the face of genuine romance are also honestly portrayed. The drama comes when Tobe cannot reify Monica any longer— when he must process what his love is, what it's really made of, and who he really is, upon meeting this real person with her own life. I would say this is a dramedy more than a comedy, and a travelogue as well. The humor (especially if you're going off of the trailer) can seem Woody Allen-esque at times (the "sexy Star Wars" clip featured has been compared to "Sleeper"), but it's more than that, and not as imitative as that comparison would let on. It's a dry, absurdist humor, a little snarky, sort of like Juno (but perhaps lower-key). Despite the titillating appearance, the film is more about, yes, coming of age than sex or anything else. "Coming of age" is a phrase that has different meanings to different people, but here it means learning about love. Sex is easy. Appreciating someone for who they really are—that's hard, and one of the lessons Tobe learns: not to put women up on pedestals, but not to swing to the other extreme either. Rather, the challenge, for all of us, is to continue to trust love, rather than get disillusioned by the prospect of being with someone who is not cosmetically 'perfect' or (even) conventionally 'desirable.' The heart wants what the heart wants, and we should be so lucky as to serve it. This is our life's work. Tobe's heroes' journey just involves some porn—who are we to judge? Visually, the film is lovely as well, rich in interesting shots, pops of color, and spot-on costuming. I really love the rich material culture this film inhabits, its use of "high" and "low" art alike, to get us (in a very subtle way) to question whether pornography can't be artistic as well—if it can't activate agape as well as eros. So, if you can relax (or look past) our culture's hang-ups about sex, this is a fine little fable about relating to people, seeing them for who they are (and not who you want them to be), and growing into yourself. I want to emphasize that the film is not smutty or vulgar, but very-lighthearted—the only time I cringed was when Pop- pop (Brian Dennehy) dipped his boiled egg in a shot of Pepto-Bismol— and ate it. That was disgusting. Sex is a healthy, natural, wonderful, and fun thing, and we should embrace it…there's just not enough sex-positive media out there, let alone any film that takes on "nontraditional" love in a sincere, open-minded, sweet and smart way. "Sex" is a three-letter word. Meet Monica Velour is a gem.Protip- Get the DVD as the commentary is very interesting, as are the deleted scenes. And because you'll want to slow down those opening credits.

This film is disappointingly good. Not because I would hoping it would suck and it didn't, but because it is fundamentally flawed in a way that all the positive things movie cannot overcome. This is a funny, sensitive story with fine performances and careful direction. It's also a tale that is structurally centered on one character while its emotional focus is almost entirely on another. The plot is all about a 17 year old kid who seeks out the 1980s porn star he's fantasized about for years. However, that harshly aged porn star is the only one writer/director Keith Bearden really cares about. It is her life and her struggle that are at the heart of this film, even though she's only a supporting character and the movie revolves around the mostly hapless teen. At the end of Meet Monica Velour, the viewer knows far more about the ex-porn star than the teen and understands her better than him. That's like knowing more about Fredo than Michael at the end of The Godfather II or more about Han than Luke at the end of Star Wars.Let me try and put it this way. The teenager's obsession with the porn star is the most important thing in his life. Yet, the audience is provided with not one scintilla of explanation for why he's obsessed with this particular figure from X rated history or how he even discovered her. This motion picture is set in 2010, which means the kid was born in 1993. The porn star ended her career the better part of a decade before the kid was born and the better part of two decades before he entered puberty. How did he find out she ever existed? And what is it about her that commands his pre-adolescent brand of adoration? I'll admit the former is primarily a pesky little plot detail that others might not care about. The latter is at the core of who this kid is, how he got to be that way and why he does the things he does. No matter how otherwise well written or performed the role, and both are nicely accomplished here, this is a character with a gaping void where his humanity should be. He's a puppet through which Bearden and actor Dustin Ingram show off their considerable talents, but that's all.In addition to Ingram, Kim Cattrall as the ex-porn star and Brian Dennehy as the teenager's grandpa are quite enjoyable to watch and their characters do have a bit of historical and personal depth to them. Even the smaller parts like Daniel Yelsky as a neighbor boy, Jee Young Han as the girl the main character should be lusting over, Keith David as the wise man who enters the teen's life and Sam McMurray as the ex-porn star's ex-husband feel like living human beings. There's not a question is my mind that you could leave almost everything else the same and if you concentrated the story on Cattrall's character and cast Ingram in a supporting role, this would have been a vastly better and more entertaining film.If Keith Bearden had only directed someone else's script, I'd be very interested in seeing more work from him. He does that good a job telling this story. That's he's the one who came up with this out-of-whack screenplay, however, gives me pause. I'd still be interested but I'd want to know what other people thought of it before investing my time and money. If you're a fan of any of the actors here, you might like Meet Monica Velour. Even though there's a lot of skill and talent evident in this production, I can't say anything better about it than that.

Even with a surprisingly strong performance from Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City, Mannequin, The Ghost Writer) as the titular character, it isn't worth meeting Monica Velour. The film is too clichéd to be any good and with a Napoleon Dynamite-ish protagonist (Dustin Ingram - Sky High) parts of it are downright bad. It is ALL seen that/done that.It is a coming of age tale about the Napoleon-clone, Tobe, who graduates from high school a virgin (oh the horror!) and is gifted a Weiner food-truck by his grandfather, Pop Pop (Brian Dennehy - First Blood, Romeo + Juliet, Assault on Precinct 13) upon graduation. It must be noted that Tobe is rather ungrateful for the gift which makes it difficult for him and the film to win-over a viewer ("oh the kid's un-imaginable plight!")To give Tobe a bit of originality, he adores vintage porn with one actress from the early 80's in particular -- Monica Velour. When he decides to sell his Weiner truck AND finds out that Ms. Velour is performing a special engagement near the buyer's location (oh the convenience!!!), Tobe roadtrips to Indiana to meet the woman of his dreams. What he discovers is that Ms. Velour is rather washed-up and jaded (and old) ... although she does initially fancy the young man's flirtations. Again -- it is ALL seen that/done that before. Tobe is supposed to come across as a pure innocent who wants/longs to help this damsel in distress; but his initial inability to listen to reason and wisdom offered up by the sage elder he is selling his truck to (Keith David - Platoon, Crash, There's Something About Mary) annoys.The film goes exactly where you'd expect it to go ... nothing more, nothing less ... except for a most-unfortunate scene from FORMERLY respected film-vet Dennehy. :( ... yes, that's a sad face. If I could type tears, they'd be there too.

So here i am wandering through my local video store looking for something good to watch and i stumble across Meet Monica Velour, judging from the cover and the description on the back i was expecting the usual silly sex comedy, boy was i wrong.Meet Monica Velour is exceptional, at times hilarious, at times awkward, at times heartbreaking. And it is all thanks to a fearless performance from Kim Cattrall, she is just down right amazing as this extremely damaged character. Never have i seen her better, she is as much this character as she is Samantha from SATC. The fact that she can immortalize a character such as Samantha and then do something completely different like this is the making of a truly great actress, and also a shamefully under-rated one.The story is wonderful, the super nerd of a small town finally gets the chance to meet his favourite porn star only to realize that her life is very different than what he imagined it would be, cue a friendship like no other i've seen in film. After i realized that this movie was totally different than what i thought it was going to be i then had the though "oh this is going to be a sappy feel good story", wrong again, this is a totally original story that doesn't have a scrap of cliché at all.I hope this movie finds a wide audience, its so deserving, Kim Cattrall needs to be in more great movies like this...... She's so great to watch.See it, you'll love it....... ;)