"Bolero" is the worst romance novel that you will ever see. What was anybody thinking when they began to do this movie? It is the film equivalent of a boyfriend taking nude photos of his girlfriend as a means to boost her up to centerfold stardom. Indeed that is a fair analogy. Bo Derek stars in and produces the film, and her husband John Derek wrote and directed it. The film is like the worst centerfolds coming to life in a naive piece of trite. There is a ton of nudity in the film, but none of it is ever erotic, it is unrealistic, every bit as ridiculous as those over airbrushed nude magazine photos that many people have gotten used to, but alas, I have not. None of it is real. It's bogus. At one point it looks as if Bo is having sex with one of the characters inside of a cloud bank. I felt like I wanted to puke from embarassment. The film is a fantasy that will always remain a fantasy.

And what the hell happened to Bo Derek anyway? One of my favorite comedies is Blake Edwards' "10," a movie that worked so damn perfectly, and lot of that had to do with the great presence of Bo as this object of desire for Dudley Moore. She was great in that film, even gaining a Golden Globe nomination. She didn't even speak until about the last act in the movie, but when she did, she was so sweet yet so naive, and her bedroom conversation with Dudley Moore was some of the best dialogue in the movie, which was filled with brilliant all sorts of words coming from the actors' mouths.

But then she started doing John Derek movies. In the 80's that was all she did. John Derek is like a guy who takes a crap and then decides to go a few days without using the restroom to see if he can turn out an even bigger pile of crap. Throughout his career, John Derek made 8 movies. 3 of which were forgettable 60's dramas, one was a movie in 1973 starring a 16 year old Bo as a woman who has erotic fantasies throughout the whole course of the movie. His "Tarzan, The Ape Man" is the only Tarzan movie I can think of that explored the sexuality of Tarzan and Jane, but you're not asking for a lot when you cast Miles O'Keefe as Tarzan. The best movie that this guy ever did was an Annette Haven porno flick in 1980 called "Love You." Granted a lot of people thought that the sex scenes featured in "Bolero" were real as a result of the movie being released unrated, but trust me. They're not. If these sex scenes are real then every Shannon Tweed movie ever made could be considered a hardcore porn. Although there is a scene in this film where Bo Derek rides completely naked on a horse, and I have no reason to believe she wasn't really riding naked on a horse.

A movie like this is only made just so Bo Derek take take her clothes off at any given moment, but there is a plot to it no less. If I submitted this script to a romance novel firm, they would surely burn it. That is how corny this movie is. Bo plays Lida MacGillivery, a rich girl who has just graduated from a British boarding school and is determined to travel the world in a quest to lose her virginity. Going along with her are her best friend and her chauffeur. I wonder if the chauffeur is getting paid overtime. He should atleast get to watch. But back to the virginity thing. They are really asking a lot of me to accept the fact that this Lida character is a virgin. This person does belly dances along with the best of them, is pretty much an unconfirmed nudist, and when the sex scenes do take part, she handles herself like she just got a contract from Al Goldstein. Lida is so not a virgin.

The first lover that Lida takes is an Arabian sheik, who is offered the chance to deflower her, only to lose that opportunity when he accidentally falls asleep before they can have sex. I wonder how many times that would happen to the Bo Dereks of the world. Obviously the man of her dreams is not a sheik. So, she goes to Spain where she falls in love with a Spanish bullfighter named Angel. Lida and Angel do have sex, which I guess means that the man of Lida's dreams is a cliche. Lida wants to spend the rest of her life making sweet love to Angel, but then an accident happens to Angel which devastatingly affects their sex life. Will they ever have good sex again? Why the hell do I care?

First off, let me talk about this supposed deflowering scene, which is wrapped up in some of the most ludicrous dialogue ever spoken in a soft core porn. The two of them lay in bed together, and Angel mutters the line "you must be ready, the bed is a selfish place." Bo then comes back with the even worse line "is there enough that I can give to you, so that you can give ecstasy to me?" The two then have sex, and there's a couple moments of unconvincing discomfort for Bo, but that quickly goes away, and the all too darkly lit sex scene continues with the two of them switching between top and bottom. If she was really losing her virginity, it'd be the most awkward sex scene ever! Instead, it's just lame.

The whole film is filled a load of crap spewing lines of attempted dialogue. Whether it's just something kind of bad like "show me how I can do everything to you," to pretty damn bad like "in the way of love, we're kindergarten toddlers," to the absolutely wretched scene where Bo is only wearing a coat of honey and says "I'm all dressed up with no place to go." And the lines that are supposed to be erotic consist of crap like this: "You say that we never found ecstasy. That it was quicksilver, always promising next time. Angel, I want ecstasy. Lets find it." Enough with the damn ecstasy. That's all anyone says in this movie. I don't think the word "sex" is ever even used. It's always about ecstasy, which only exists when someone is looking for a better way to say the word "f**king." The tagline for the movie is even "an adventure in ecstasy."

Although, that kind of did get me thinking. Maybe this person isn't a virgin after all. Maybe she doesn't even want sex. Sex could possibly not even be on her mind. When she says that she wants ecstasy, she wants the druuuug ecstasy. Ahhhh, now I get it! She's a drug addict! And when she takes the drug ecstasy it causes her to want to have sex all the time, so she in turn is trying to get more ecstasy so she can keep on screwing! Now it all makes sense to me! Actually, I don't really think all of that is true, but either way Lida MacGillivery is freakin airhead, and John Derek's movies are about as opposite as ecstasy as you could get.

The picture is cleared up nicely with a very good digital transfer, and the audio, presented in surround, is very well put together. Still, someone obviously spent way too much time preserving this thing. If they had just transfered the video from the ancient VHS, I don't think anyone would have cared.

MGM is kind of like the big studio twin to Diamond Entertainment. Very rarely will you get an MGM DVD that doesn't have anything else to offer other than a trailer. Some damn fine classics have been released on this label with nothing other than a trailer. Which I guess is one up from Diamond Entertainment, so that's something. But in the case of "Bolero," who could really blame them? It really says a lot that they even released it in the first place. The movie is a spoonful of the cheesiest and corniest romantic cliches I've seen in any movie in my life. I hated this movie, hated almost everything about. What is the one thing that I didn't hate about the movie? Well, the music by the Bernsteins was pretty lovely. Too bad it had to be wasted on a trite John Derek flick.

Recommended: No