My Tutor (1983)
6/10
Good enough for what it is.
21 January 2007
One of the more prominent teen exploitation sex romps of the early 1980s. My Tutor is the same type of thing we saw in Private Lessons. It's all basically a teenage boy's fantasy about having an affair with a beautiful older woman. Every so often you hear about this kind of thing happening in real life, so there may even be a little more to the concept than pure fantasy.

Matt Lattanzi plays the lucky young man in this film. For those of you who may have forgotten about this guy, he was kind of the Kevin Federline of the 1980s. He was a back-up dancer on the set of Xanadu who somehow won Olivia Newton-John over. The two were married for several years. Lattanzi plays a young man named Bobby. He seems nice enough, but is very shy with women. He also has just flunked his final exam in French class, and will have to re-take it and do very well or Yale will not let him attend in the fall. Bobby really doesn't want to go to Yale. He'd rather study astronomy at UCLA. Not a bad choice actually. I'm sure the women there are much better-looking! His father will hear nothing of astronomy, though! He hires a beautiful older woman to teach Bobby French, but Bobby is understandably more interested in winning her over! Caren Kaye plays Terry Green, the tutor. She is a stunningly beautiful woman who shows us plenty of what she has to offer! Yum! The bulk of the film details her attempts to teach Bobby French, and his attempts to become her man.

The film has a few dumb subplots that go nowhere. One deals with Terry's idiotic ex-boyfriend trying to hook back up with her. Another deals with Bobby's mother and their domestic help pulling the wool over her eyes. Crispin Glover is pretty funny as Bobby's best friend who is frantically trying to get laid. (weren't we all back then?) My Tutor is very, very light on plot. It mostly exists to titillate the audience, but there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing pretentious, and nary a serious moment in the entire romp, unless you count Bobby's wreck of his motor scooter later on.

The film is hurt by some really really awful music and songs. It is also badly under-lit. Lattanzi is a better actor than you might expect. His voice is a little high, but that fits this character pretty well. The film is filled with gobs of nudity and sexual situations. Take my word for it... you will get what you paid for in terms of t&a.

Considering what this film tries to be, and what it actually accomplishes, it is worth about 6 of 10 stars. A harmless romp from a much more innocent era of film-making.

The Hound.
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