The Providence Journal

Working Stiff has lots of fun, not much sex

by MICHAEL JANUSONIS
JOURNAL ARTS WRITER

Greg Joyce's Working Stiff is a clever sex farce that tickles the funny bone right from its double entendre title.

In Joyce's devilish plot, a beleaguered corporate filmmaker hopes to pay his overdue mortgage by shooting a porno film at night in the company video studio facilities where by day he's shooting an anti-sexual harassment training film.

Actually, considering the subject, there's not a whole lot of flesh in the rather chaste sex scenes that occur mostly just out of camera range. Were the actors timid? Was Joyce? If Working Stiff went before the ratings board it would probably earn a mild R, more for what's implied than what's seen. On one hand, this declaws the film's raciest possibilities. On the other hand, it's now more universally friendly.

No denying Working Stiff is pretty funny, though. Sean Vincent Biggins plays Gene, the hapless hero. With a bigger budget, the role would have gone to someone like Matthew Broderick who has a penchant for characters bordering on schnookdom. But Biggins is just fine as Gene, who has carved a niche at a huge Boston technology company where he makes industrial training films using its tongue-tied employees.

Desperate for cash, Gene gets hooked up with a group of investors who back porno films. They're led by a wacky dentist who only sees his business partners in his examining chair where he does a mean impersonation of Laurence Olivier's mad dentist in Marathon Man.

Soon Gene is auditioning professional porno stars, having them read passages from Macbeth. Egged on by his on-the-job pals Margaret (Maia Tamanakis) and cinematographer Buddy (Paul J. D'Amato), and with a big boost from a former porno queen who starred under the name Fairly Gorgeous (Leslie Lang) and has now come to his rescue, Gene plugs away to the inevitable moment when his epic is uncovered by his boss.

Although Working Stiff loses some of its edge as it heads for its satisfyingly predictable conclusion, Joyce has added lots of funny things up front to keep the script bubbling. A song called I've Had an Ordinary Day plays while the film crew auditions a man with his pants down. The amazed Gene says, "I just say, 'action!' and people start having sex."

Biggins has a wonderful Everyman sensibility that's charismatic and his little romance with the more determined Margaret works because they complement each other so well. Lang's Fairly Gorgeous is a standout, a strong actress who is self-assured and spunky. John P. Arnold's corporate exec is pure snake-in-the-grass slippery and Michele Markarian's hypocritical politically correct feminist is the movie's wicked queen incarnate.

 Working Stiff may not win any awards as the film festival, but it's guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.*

* Actually we did win awards!