Six years after the original ‘A Thousand and One Erotic Nights’ Some absolute maverick decided that a sequal was all but inevitable? Im not entirely sure WHY they did what they did…But..they did! and its pretty much as bad as you can imagine.
So…lets get the best net plus from this film out of the way up front! theres not as MUCH ‘Brown-face’ in this film as the original! there is still a couple instances of it, but hey! at least they’re making the concious effort to be at least a *little* bit less racist…right!?…right?….
Thats where the good news begins and ends. As this films essentially simultaineously a prequel, and a retcon of the original film. Taking place before the events of ‘A Thousand and One Erotic Nights’ But airlocking the subplot about the Sultans wife cheating and him deciding to strangle his harem on a nightly basis.
Instead; this film takes place in the past, and deals with a period of time where sex was outlawed in the kingdom because the Sultan was struggling to get aroused by anything. So, his personal assistant holds a contest in the kingdom to find the right woman to give the Sultan his Mojo back.
And…thats basically the bulk of the film, on a single ‘white void with a palm tree’ set, women engage in sexual activity in front of the Sultans staff, and eventually 3 of them get chosen…and then its whittled down to one. Thats the movie. theres very brief linking narrations to set up each sex scene. But its basically just sex scene after sex scene with very little real meat to hold things together.
The scripts paper thin, the pacings repetative and quite boring, the films leaning HARD into comedy…but its cringey cartoony style comedy which really frustrates the mood the films trying to set for itself. It cant decide on a tone, so it just decides to do whatever it wants in between the sex scenes.
The direction itself is flat, fairly lifeless. The film has an oral fixation for most of the runtime, which basically translates on screen to 95% of the shots being varients on closeups of the cast doing the do…with no real scene structuring or engaging choreography to help sell the scenes. It’s mechanical, it feels cold quite honestly.
The edit is sluggish and repetative as well, long shots cutting between a 2 cam setup is about as good as this thing gets, its a dead behind the eyes production that really fails to deliver on much of anything it promises.
The ONE thing that really made the last film just about rise to a standard was the quality of the set design and some of the transitions between scenes. No such luck with that here, were basically down to a couple of cardboard 3 wall sets and a white void scene. The films so cheap it couldnt even affoard new stock footage, and instead just nicks the stock footage from the first film, DIRECTLY FROM the first film.
The performances are cheesy, awkward and unarousing. The physicality is missing any kind of naturalism. its underwhelming at best, and downright boring at worst.
This HAD to be a cash in. Theres no other way it could have been anything else. and a dire one at that. definitely one to avoid.
TYTD Reviews 