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I’m all for a silly sex comedy, but what does a video game arcade lend itself to the subgenre? Arcade games may have been fun to play in the ’80s, but it’s certainly no fun watching characters play them in movies. There’s a reason a lot of sex comedies take place at beach resorts or fraternities. Those locations lend themselves to sex and shenanigans. Only one sex comedy takes place in a video game arcade, and it’s called Joysticks. At least the title gives some fun double entendre.
Like many sex comedies, Joysticks follows the formula of a bunch of goofy characters rallying together to save their favorite hangout from either financial or political annihilation. The arcade is the hangout here, and its annihilator comes in the form of Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall, The Natural), playing a businessman who petitions the local government to shut down the arcade because he believes it’s a sleazy den of iniquity. It doesn’t help that he can’t keep his valley-girl daughter (Corinne Bohrer) from going there behind his back. He ends up teaming with an odd-ball punk rocker (Jonathan Gries) to bring the arcade down — whether through violence, legal trial, or a not-so-climactic video game duel.
Joysticks is a transparent attempt to cash in on the early ’80s phenomenon of video arcades while riding the coattails of Porky’s, arguably the most successful sex comedy ever made. But arcades aren’t sexy. And Joysticks is no Porky’s. It’s a more disjointed assembly of skits than Porky’s, more clunky in its execution, more calculated, less funny, and perhaps most importantly, it’s less character-motivated. In sex comedies, character and actor charisma are everything — because we all know the plot, and it’s meager by design.
While the script doesn’t give them much to work with, the three main actors in Joysticks are not without their charm. I like Leif Green as the short, sexually naïve arcade employee. It should have been his movie. The film begins from his point of view, but pulls away from him and loses focus by the end. Scott McGinnis fills the role of hunky arcade manager nicely, and Jim Greenleaf is sometimes funny as the fat, farting, game guru. Perhaps the best performance comes from Jonathan Gries as the punk who gets banned from the arcade — he’s the most cartoonishly over-the-top character, the kind the movie needs more of. The scene in which Gries meets with Joe Don Baker to discuss their team-up is the best in the movie thanks to Gries’ charisma and Baker’s willingness to meet him on his own weird level.
Oh, and if you like boobs, there are boobs. But believe it or not, sometimes boobs just aren’t enough. If you like super low-budget, amateurish movies with uneven execution and generic laughs, ask your doctor if Joysticks might be right for you. For everyone else, there are better sex comedies in the sea.
Directed by Greydon Clark (Without Warning).