Hollywood Hot Tubs 2: Educating Crystal Reviews

Those who remember the original HOLLYWOOD HOT TUBS (1984)--or who have vainly tried to forget it--may recall that Crystal Landers was a grotesquely caricatured Valley Girl, the daughter of a spa owner. In this installment of the epic saga, mom Pamela (Remy O'Neill) enrolls Crystal (Jewel Shepard, repeating her role from the first film) in a night-school business course, where she meets Jason (Patrick Day), a glib yuppie-in-training who tries to educate the comely lass in the proper diction and attire for the financial world. Meanwhile, Pamela's heart is stolen by an oily Arab prince; naturally, the desert scoundrel's chauffeur, Gary (David Tiefen), falls for Crystal. When he overhears Prince Ahmet (Bart Braverman) plotting a hostile takeover of the Landers' hot-tub business, Gary warns Crystal, and they set out to prevent Pamela's wedding to Ahmet by photographing the lusty prince with a bikinied babe. There's also a subplot about a middle-aged hot-tub repairman who turns out to be a legendary rock 'n' roll guitarist--the guy who taught Pete Townsend and Jimi Hendrix. All this and a pie fight too. Ostensibly a comedy, HOLLYWOOD HOT TUBS II doesn't provide a single laugh. The pacing is tortuously slow, and the Arab portrayals are embarrassingly racist. Even if you are able to find some amusement in Crystal and her, like, mannerisms, she's only on-screen for about a third of the running time. Under better circumstances, Day's fast-talking capitalist boy wonder would have been fun, but here he's just part of the inanity. Tiefen's stuck with a character gimmick that wore out ages ago; he's an aspiring pulp novelist who continually dictates hardboiled narration to himself. There are also numerous topless scenes, none of which involve the principal actors, despite a home-video ad campaign featuring a scantily clad Shepard. The film also offers a bawdy closing theme, "Educating Crystal Rap" (Kirkman Ridd, Patrick "Sore Throat" Day, Sammy "The Beach" Klien, performed by Whitey Got No Soul). (Nudity, sexual situations, profanity, adult situations.)