The Movie:

The back of the packaging for this latest release from Vivid Alt states that 'Girls lie.' More specifically, Charlotte lies to get the money that she and her boyfriend need to get high, Dana lies because she wants more than one boy can give, Pixie lies because she played too much, and Riley lies to her boyfriend about her supposed modeling career. That's the very simple premise behind what is a slightly more complex porno movie than most are likely used to. The film starts with the girls lying to their respective partners for reasons detailed above. They're bullshit artists feeding the gullible ones in their lives a line. The reality of the world is that girls do lie (so do guys, in all fairness) and that guys usually want to believe them, because let's face it, it's easier to accept it than to try and outsmart the fairer sex.

So we've got this odd little premise, we see the girls lying, and that sets everything up. There's not really a cohesive plot here, at least not in the traditional sense, but there are strings running through the movie that are tied up towards the end of the movie in that we see the girls lie and then we see them get away with it. Between sex scenes we see location footage, the camera capturing open plains or something as simple and deceptively sexy as Charlotte riding her bike or buying a Popsicle. We see Dana's feet for no other reason than the fact that McKai probably wanted to show them to us and we see Charlotte and Daniel talking to one another before actually fucking. It sets up the sex and works as a nice break between fuck scenes. It's a little odd, but it works and it fits.

But enough rambling, because there's more of that down the road. Here's who fucks who and how they do it:

Scene One - Charlotte Stokley And William: When this scene starts, Charlotte finds William watching porno in bed. She scorns him for not getting hard for her but getting hard for porno instead, and soon enough she's got her top up and is showing of her tits for him. He touches her and he sucks on her tits before laying down so she can ride his face. They move into a sixty-nine and go at it for a bit before she heads south and licks his nuts and blows him some more. After a fantastic looking blowjob she gets on her back with her legs up and he pounds her pussy for a bit, only to roll over so he can have at it from behind. He pulls out and gives her a facial shortly after she tells him he doesn't have to watch porno anymore because he can fuck her instead.

Scene Two - Dana Dearmond And Joey Ray: This scene starts with the two of them spooning in bed. He gets up and she follows him and they smooch a bit. He puts his cock between her feet and then she drops to her knees and blows him, stoking him at the same time and having fun from the looks of things. He lies back and she rides him reverse cowgirl style, then she gets on her back so he can lick her feet while he fucks her missionary style. She blows him again then lies on her chest with her ass up so he can fuck her doggy style while she puts her fist inside her mouth. She blows him again then he gets her on her back and fucks her feet, finishing the scene by coming all over her toes with some spillage onto her belly.

Scene Three - Pixie Pearl And Zak Sabbath: These two fall through the door together and land on the couch while kissing. Her clothes come off and soon they're both naked, and she's got her cock in his mouth. After she blows him she sits back and spreads so that he can eat her out and finger fuck her. After that he sits down and she gets on top of him to ride him reverse cowgirl. She bends over and we get a good look at her back tattoo while he fucks her pussy from behind and she looks at herself in the mirror. After that she drops to her knees and sucks him to a finish taking his load into her mouth.

Scene Four - Riley Mason And Alex Gonz: When we catch these two, they've already got things well under way as she's straddling him and they're kissing. He gets her titties in his mouth and then she blows him. She lies back and he takes his time fucking her missionary style, before getting her on all fours and having her from behind. He pulls out and she strokes him off into her mouth.

Scene Five - Riley Mason And Tom Byron: These two pose in front of the camera for a bit as the man behind the scenes works on his focus. Once it's rolling we see things in VHS quality (there are even tracking lines on the bottom of the frame) to give the illusion that these two are starring in a porno (within a porno!). Tom comes up behind her and kisses her neck and she bends over so that he can spank her. He licks her ass cheeks and then he drops his pants so that she can fall to her knees and suck his cock. After that she gets on all fours and he fucks her doggy style, taking his time and enjoying himself. She blows him and then gets on top of him and rides him reverse cowgirl, playing with herself as she bounces up and down. She gets on her side and he fucks her snatch that way for a bit. He slips the head into her asshole for a bit but she doesn't seem too happy about that so he pulls out and he strokes off into her mouth. This is an interesting scene as Riley, as fantastic as she looks here, is totally not into it - and it would seem this was on purpose. This scene is made to intentionally look like bad porno, from the quality of the image to the cheesy sets to the way she keeps looking into the camera to Byron's dialogue. Somehow, it still manages to be sexy, though a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that Riley is just naturally sexy and she's taking a dick inside of her. You can't fight nature, kids.

Scene Six - Pixie Pearl And Julius Ceazher: After a car ride, these two find themselves in an unfinished house of some sort out in the middle of nowhere. They go inside and start kissing, and she strokes him hard before taking him in her mouth and sucking him off. She gets down on all fours and he eats her pussy and ass from behind, before getting on his back so she can ride him reverse cowgirl style. She gets on all fours again and he fucks her pussy from behind, then she gets on her back and rubs her clit while he does her missionary style. After that she stands up and bends over while he does her from behind, before she gets down on her knees and sucks him, taking his load in her mouth and on her face.

Scene Seven - Dana Dearmond And Scott Nails: Dana wanders into Scott's apartment and curls up on the couch with him. She's just fucked Joey but she wants more and so she climbs on top of her sleeping friend and wakes him up. She takes his pants down and gives him head, and he wakes up and titty fucks her for a bit. She blows him again, really aggressively, and then he fucks her while they spoon on the couch. She slaps her pierced clit and then she sticks his dick up her ass while she rides him reverse cowgirl style and fingers herself. She sucks him then gets down on all fours with her ass up so that he can rail her back door some more and she can continue to work her pussy. He pulls out and jerks himself off into her mouth ending the only real anal scene in the movie.

Scene Eight - Charlotte Stokely And Daniel: Charlotte is sitting on the bed with Daniel who tells her that he's never had sex with a girl before but he's not a virgin. She figures out he's gay and tells him she won't do anal, he says that's okay, he just wants to try it with a woman. She agrees and they start to kiss. He plays with her tits then lifts up her skirt and puts three fingers into her. She sucks his cock for him and then she gets on the bed on her back so that he can fuck her missionary style. He lies down and she rides him reverse cowgirl, then he gets on his back and she sucks his dick until he comes into her mouth.

So how does this all fare? There was, after all, a lot of hype around this picture form the get-go and after the intensely successful Neu Wave Hookers for VCA, Eon McKai was probably feeling a bit of pressure. That wasn't going to be an easy act to follow but thankfully he's done a really good job here. Discarding the complete and total 'eye candy' pop look of Neu Wave Hookers he's instead gone for a less is more motif here, shooting the action without a lot of harsh lights and without the girls wearing too much make up. He may have taken a page from Dave Naz in that regard but the girls here are all intensely sexy on their own, they don't need a lot of make up to hide anything, as their flaws are really just part of their beauty. So what is Riley's got a zit on her ass or Dana's got just a tiny hint of a belly - find a real girl who doesn't! It's far more exciting to see genuinely attractive women in pornography rather than the Barbie Dolls that have been starring in smut movies for so long now and in a sense this is a throw back to the early days of the industry when real people were cast in porno movies (having Tom Byron show up is another way of paying respect to what came before). Pornography was built, at least to a certain extent, on a foundation of realism and it's refreshing to see McKai and a few others embracing that with their work.

With that little rant out of the way, the sex is what is important in a porno and thankfully each and every one of these scenes is a winner. The camera captures everything and leaves nothing to the imagination and it's all very well edited to the point where the sex scenes aren't too long (a common complaint about some of his earlier movies) nor are they too short - they're just right. The performers have a good chemistry together, a few of them having worked together before, and while there's enough kink in here and a few taboos (a girl and a gay guy getting it on isn't something you see a lot in porn geared to a heterosexual market) to keep things interesting without going so far as to alienate or gross out the audience. With Girls Lie McKai has taken some interesting concepts and exploited them wholeheartedly and the resulting movie is a fantastic blend of pornography, arthouse cinema, music, sex, and of course, lies. The whole thing is bullshit, when you think about it - pornography is a lie. Everything here is fake to a certain extent, just as porno tends to be - the difference here being that it's a lot of fun to believe this one.

The DVD

Video:

This shot on video production looks pretty clean presented here in a reasonably stable 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. There is some mild edge enhancement in a couple of spots and a noticeable bit of mpeg compression evident in some of the darker colors and the blacks but other than that, there's not a lot to complain about save for once or twice where the reds bleed just a bit which seems to be common for material that was shot on DV. Skin tones look nice and natural, the compositions are dead on, and aside from the fact that this digital video production looks like a digital video production and as such suffers from the minor defects usually associated with the format, everything is coming up roses as far as the look of the film is concerned. Any softness that appears on camera, and there's a fair bit of it, seems to be intentional and even if it isn't, it works.

Sound:

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround track is quite sufficient. The dialogue comes through cleanly and clearly as do all of the moans and groans. The guitar driven soundtrack is mixed in properly at a decent level to make sure that we can hear both the music as well as the performers as the same time. Bass response is nice and lively and overall, for a porno movie, this is a way, way better than average effort and it actually sounds really good.

Extras:

Disc One is devoid of any extra features save for the optional commentary track with Eon McKai, John St. Nicholas, William Woods, Charlotte Stokely, Dana Dearmond, Octavio Winkytiki, Daniel, Riley Mason and a few others. This track can be chaotic in spots as the levels on the mic go up and down and sometimes people talk over one another and there's almost always people talking in the background. That being said, there are also some cool stories to be told. Charlotte talks about Dana's addition to her Sidekick, and she talks about working in her first scene at nineteen years old. Dana talks about how her tits bounce on the camera and look good doing so, and Eon talks about setting up some shots. Dana seems okay with using her feet in her scenes, and about Joey's tattoos. Some of the girls allude to having a love child in a certain band then they go off about him and one of the crew members talks about how his car shows up in the movie. If you can deal with the chaos here, it's enjoyable but getting rid of some of the background noise would have made this one easier to handle.

The bulk of the extra features, however, are found on the second disc in the set. Things start off nicely with a Behind The Scenes featurette that clocks in at roughly thirty-four minutes in length. A lot of this is simply raw, behind the scenes footage without a whole lot of context but it does capture some interesting moments such as a few photo shoots and the set up of a few key scenes in the movie. You'll see Winkytiki getting ready to light a few scenes and you'll see Pixie and Riley getting ready to do the deed on camera. We see the cast and crew head to a location to do a scene and we see some of the girls experimenting with their wardrobe options. Charlotte rides around on her bike and looks incredibly sexy doing so (for reasons that can't really be explained logically - just trust me) and at one point we hear how a certain crewmember found some crack in his hotel room. There's some sex footage in here too, towards the end, and we see Charlotte suck Alex's cock and we see Dana and Joey goofing around on set and playing with her feet and then later Dana showing off her pussy rubbing skills for the camera in an amusing and unusually sexy impromptu faux-masturbation stunt.

From there we're treated to a Bonus Scene With Dana Dearmond and Joey Ray again. It's a twenty-five minute full on hardcore piece that starts with some foreplay, leads into some blowjob footage and then starts with the fucking proper. She takes it in the pussy from a few different angles and then up the ass and towards the end there's some fingering which results in some squirting. Dana's not wearing any make up (or if she is, it's really minimal) here which might put some off but anyone with half a brain knows that make up only goes so far and the fact that she looks as good as she does here without it counts for a lot. Why this wasn't used in the feature is anyone's guess as it's a really strong scene, especially the last five minutes or so which get quite intense.

A second documentary is here, entitled We Weren't Welcome that takes a look at some of the location shooting. Look closely during this one and you'll spot XCritic Editor Chris Thorne, poking around on set! This runs for about five and a half minutes nad it features McKai's narration over some location footage and some clips from the film and it gives us a rough idea of what it was like trying to find the right place to make the right movie. The only girl who appears in here is Dana, but that's okay.

An extensive still gallery of shots taken of the cast by Eon McKai is also included here, and they detail pre-production, on set action, off set action and the recording of the commentary track that is found on disc one. Also to be found here are trailers for Girls Lie, The ReBelle Rousers as well as for Skater Girl Fever which features no sex or nudity but which still manages to be hot somehow - if you've seen the movie, you'll get it.

Also worth noting is that the third disc in this package contains the entire soundtrack for the feature on a handy compact disc. There are fifteen tracks here in total:

If You Were Once Young, Rage - The Panthers
Charlotte's Popsicle Prophecy
Gold Cross - XBXRX
Tom Tried
Roses And Teeth For Ludwig Wittgenstein - Matmos
One-Eye
TV Got Ahold Of My Life - Child P
Yea
Earn Your Shame - Tommy Sunshine
Modeling?
Mingle - Anavan
You Wanna Start?
Queens Of The Borrowed Light - Wolves In The Thrown Room
So You're A Virgin?
Duster - SubArchanoid Space

Seeing as music plays such an important part in the feature it's really nice to have this all here on CD. Even without the aid of the visuals that the feature obviously provides the music is pretty keen on its own.

The whole thing is wrapped up in some slick, stylish menus and chapter selection is provided for the feature itself. The packaging for this release is a sturdy paper slip case that features some great late photography on the cover that really suits the movie nicely and which wouldn't offend your mom if you left it lying around your pad for her to discover. That being said, the discs scratch really easily in this package (the 2nd disc of the review copy sent was scratched when it was opened, as noted) so while it's pretty, it isn't really practical. Smart smut connoisseurs will likely want to take the discs out and put them in paper sleeves or something.

Final Thoughts:

Naturally hot women, well shot and well edited sex scenes, a great soundtrack, interesting locations and a rather clever little way of tying it all up combine to make Girls Lie one of the sexiest and more interesting porno titles to come out this year. Vivid Alt's package looks and sounds really good and the extra features are interesting and plentiful making this one completely worthy of its highly recommended rating.