City Sex

Vivid Entertainment

Genre: Feature

Director: Paul Thomas

Cast: Lanny Barby, Jack Lawrence, Kimberly Franklin, Sascha, Havana Ginger, Ana Nova, Demi Delia
Non-sex roles: Paul Thomas, Red Ezra, others

Length: 87:04 minutes

Date of Production: 11/18/2006

Extra's: For many of you, the completely unrelated bonus scenes from Roughed Up, Dumb Blonde, Emperor, The Return of Tori Welles, and Kayden's First Time will be the best extras. They were not the best such scenes ever offered on a Vivid DVD but did add some value for me so you might enjoy them too. There were also trailers to like Debbie Does Dallas Again, Flawless, Family Gardener, and Layout, as well as a biography for hotty Lanny Barby, a photogallery, some spam, and a positions room too. For me though, the best extra was the 11:16 minute long Behind the Scenes feature by "Dizzy" that started with a clip of "Baby: Doggie Stunt Double" and then moving on to a variety of other clips of the cast and crew at work. There were comedic clips and interviews interspersed with the usual footage and it was fun to watch overall.

Condoms: None

Audio/Video Quality: City Sex was presented in the same 1.78:1 ratio anamorphic widescreen color it was shot in by director Paul Thomas for Vivid Entertainment. For those unfamiliar with his background, suffice it to say that his experiences date back over three decades from when he was a performer and include scores of award winning movies (along with numerous more that have been less praiseworthy). The lighting was reasonably well handled but some of the scenes appeared to be over saturated and dark with others grainier than normal; not completely uninteresting visually but still outside of the style I have been attributing to the director for so long now. The composition of the camera angles and lighting were not always optimal this time, PT seeing fit to try and enhance the look of the ladies but not at the expense of his thematic touches; a point of contention I have with a number of his works in recent years. The fleshtones were not as accurate this time but the DVD mastering was well done (if in a bitrate hovering around 4 Mbps), making it a mixed bag in terms of visual quality. The audio was presented in a 2.0 Dolby Digital English (in 192 Kbps) offering with the vocals sounding flat and the music pretty decent. For some reason, the levels were lower than usual but aside from the added background noise from doing so, the dynamic range was average and the separation of the vocal track nonexistent.

Body of Review: Paul Thomas is the lead director for Vivid Entertainment these days and has been for years. While he may be responsible for their biggest efforts, he is also the "go to" guy for many of their smaller works of varying quality, many of which you never hear about outside of the occasional review like this one here. Today's review is on City Sex, supposedly the latest showcase title featuring the lovely a
href=https://xcritic.com/reviews_IMPORTED/read.php?ID=28854>Lanny Barby but actually proving to be a rambling bit of work that has Sascha and Jack Lawrence as a couple of metrosexual men that live together, making their way through life servicing Lanny and others on the side. To be fair, I don't expect Vivid to write all of their stories about their contract gals but structuring them that way would not be a bad idea given recent sales figures in the industry. In any case, the movie was short and as written by the director, it made no real sense except for the ending moral of the story that everyone gets fucked (including, I presume, the consumer that buys this one). That might be a bit harsh since some of the couple's oriented sex was pretty good, but the limitations were plentiful and I'll only briefly touch on them in the review. Here's a quick look at the scenes by cast and action, noting that no condoms were used:

Scene One: Lanny Barby, the brunette beauty featured on the front cover, was up first outside in her form fitting outfit on the deck as Jack Lawrence tended to his chore of "petting the kitty". This meant that after walking the dog, he was supposed to take care of her sexual needs, the movie wasting no time with fast forward fodder as he went right to work on her cookie. She slobbed his knob briefly and he licked her a few times before taking the plunge into her sweet pussy, pounding it hard as her breasts swayed back and forth. Sadly, the scene was incredibly short and while she did some PTM, she really did not have the chance to actively ride his cock before he busted a nut of population pudding on her stomach. The dialogue was minimal (love her accent) but I felt like this was a wasted opportunity compared to some of her work with director B. Skow that likes to extend the tease and sex in her scenes.

Scene Two: Kimberly Franklin, a curvy brunette wearing pink & black bikini underwear, was up next with metrosexual Sascha; the gal's accent even heavier than Lanny as she told the guy to suck her pussy. He ate her through her panties, causing her to move them aside as the light jazz score played in the background, but as he fingered her, the scene simply ended as she pushed him away (having gotten off and telling him she'd "finish later"). This pissed me off since the goofier aspects of the movie like the guys walking the dog and dialogue parts were given lots of time while the sex was truncated.

Scene Three: Havana Ginger, a curvy gal of mixed racial heritage (black and Latina?), was up next in a solo masturbation scene after leaving the two guys at the dinner table. They were here to pretend they were gay or at least heavily bisexual, the point lost on me in this story of manwhores and manginas". She was on the bed in the darkened bedroom, speaking Spanish as she slowly rubbed herself (giving up the sexy talk that I admit to being familiar with thanks to previous girlfriends). She fingered herself after taking off her clothing and used a vibrator but the scene was a THIRD that was so short that no heat could be effectively built up.

Scene Four: Kimberly Franklin and Havana Ginger were up next as Kimberly bathed in the large sunken tub. They kissed seductively and given the previous three "scenes" I half expected it to end within five minutes to leave me with another case of blue balls. Havana jumped into the tub with her top on and the sudsy water did little to cover either of them as they pawed each other, kissing along the way. They started in on giving each other cunnilingus when the scene abruptly cut to them going into the bedroom where Sascha was waiting for them with an erection. Did it make a lot of sense? No, it did not, but Havana seemed to prefer working with the manly meat of the guy and they soon joined Kimberly on the bed for some limited penetration and taste testing before he popped out a round on Kimberly's stomach. It was far shorter than I like but it was markedly better than the previous scenes of the movie.

Scene Five: Lanny Barby, barely wearing a black dress, and curvy German anal queen Ana Nova, were up next on a small boat with Sascha as the city skyline was seen in the background. The gals licked each other as much as him with the moderately generic hip hop music a bit different than usual playing in the background. The lighting was washed out in the background but even the cramped quarters of the upper cabin area gave plenty of opportunities for Lanny to be highlighted; the gal in the center of the trio and therefore always seemingly in the shot. When given a chance, Lanny gave a very active ride on his cock with her pussy but even with him boning Ana, the scene simply cut out too soon without any real pop shot (it looked like Sascha was looking over his shoulder as if the cops were coming on board or something).

Scene Six: Lanny Barby, Ana Nova, and Sascha, were thankfully given a chance to make amends in the living room since their previous scene was cut short. Sascha initially wielded a camera as the ladies did each other, Lanny licking Ana and getting licked in return. The fingering included some anal action until a POV hummer was given to the lucky guy by the gals teaming up to get him rock hard. The gals were aggressive with his cock, each wanting to get more of it than the other, Ana winning this round as Lanny picked up the camera to get her friend in action. Ana picked it up when Lanny went in for the ride though, actively bouncing on his cock really well, although Ana in the way of the primary camera all too often (why this wasn't handled on set is beyond me since seeing Lanny's sweet ass obstructed by a camera is always going to be a bad idea in my opinion). That the color settings of the two cameras were substantially different was a nuisance too; Ana dropping the camera to get some penetration of her cookie helping matters out a lot. Ana took the facial and the scene ended, giving me some fun but making the totality of the circumstance lacking except for Lanny's presence (I'm a fan so that helps but it makes it all the more frustrating as well).

Scene Seven: Demi Delia, a curvy older woman in porn typically associated with her boy toy Randy Spears, was up next as a grieving widow on the prowl, attacking Sascha on the bed. The garish nature of the furnishings aside, she was rejected and resorted to tricking him into the bedroom upstairs where she jumped his bones. After a few kisses, he gave in (this is porn after all) and soon stripped naked himself, eating her out as she spread her legs quite flexibly. She gave an okay hummer to him and they screwed vaginally, Sascha doing the work before rubbing out a wad onto her ass cheeks, the passive lay not at all what I expected from the situation that started with such promise.

Summary: City Sex by director Paul Thomas for Vivid Entertainment was a letdown for me since I have come to rely on Lanny's works for them to be almost a given in terms of quality so whatever went wrong that could not be fixed should have been dealt with in another manner rather than release the movie like this. It wasn't all bad but there seemed to be some major gaping errors that an experienced director like Paul would normally catch and the feature portions were as weak as the sex (the first several scenes looked almost as if teasers rather than full scenes). I'm not a Vivid apologist, having seen a lot of titles in recent years that were far better than what a few internet critics still cling to as the norm (they aren't), but anything higher than a Skip It for City Sex would be doing the better titles by the company a disservice. Pass this one up in favor of any of their better titles of late but pass it up or be prepared to listen to people say "I told you so" when you find out on your own.