Janine Loves Jenna

In Janine Loves Jenna, there are certain plotlines that offer a maximum of opportunity for the characters to get fucked left and right without recourse to sense or logic; chief among these is the trip through Hell (or what the main character, usually a woman, believes is Hell). This device offers as well the maximum excuse for foreboding music, smoke, exotic costumes, and religious imagery, and it is indeed a popular one. Despite its name, Janine Loves Jenna is a trip-through-hell title, another odyssey through the subconscious of a tormented woman (and, on another level, of another porn director).

The road to hell is a short one for Jenna Jameson -- six minutes of visual exposition takes us all the way to the black gates. Jenna Jameson and Janine Lindemulder, in the form of a pair of cartoon blondes who are only slightly less realistic than the women themselves, enter a limo that crashes when the driver can't keep his eyes off the lesbian two-blonde action in the back seat. Janine dies in the wreck, and the cartoon portion of the movie (which is strongly reminiscent of a Tek Jansen adventure, if that means anything to you) ends, giving way to a dialogue-free scene in which Jenna Jameson and Justin Sterling get into a fight that leads Jenna, Miss Jones-like, to commit suicide in a bathtub. Naturally, she heads downstairs to suffer for her sins (if we were any doubt, the first line spoken in the movie is "This is my journey through Hell.").

Hell is not the way I imagined it, or at least not the way I imagined it before I started watching porn movies. For one thing, it has Janine and Justine Joli in it, naked and making out with each other. This is Jenna Jameson and Janine's big reunion scene, which is odd, because the aforementioned Justine Joli is there. It's hard to know what to make of that, especially since the three girls switch roles a lot in terms of dominance and submission, but presumably it is the director's position that any reunion can be improved by adding a naked and fucking Justine Joli, and I can't say as how I can argue against it. The three of them get it on in various configurations, and afterward Janine and Jenna have a little heart-to-heart in which we find out that this is purgatory, not actually hell. Janine has been here for a little while and knows her way around -- enough, at least to be able to offer Jenna Jameson a way out.

Unfortunately, the way out is through, and past a mysterious 'him' (who could it be?), and Janine warns Jenna Jameson not to be distracted by the likes of Dominica Leoni, Jerry, and Reno, who show up on a wall-mounted monitor having crazy threesome hell sex. Dominica, wearing a set of metal headgear with a big curved horn sprouting from it, gets fucked silly by the two guys before a person who may or may not be a demon shows up and violates her ass. To be fair, she appears to enjoy it. We ourselves have no choice but to be distracted by the scene, as it goes on for a good ten minutes.

Jenna Jameson can't get her head around the idea that she's really in (or near) Hell, and Janine doesn't help -- when Jenna mentions how real everything seems, Janine tells her that nothing she sees is real, even as she's trying to convince Jenna that the situation is not a dream. It's very confusing. They watch another scene, this time starring themselves. The two women, now clad in what look to be silk kimonos and walking in the rain, are visited by another pair of the underworld's denizens, two studs cunningly disguised by filthy rags and hoods. Luckily for those two guys, it's time for some sex, and Janine and Jenna get busy sucking. It's not long before both of them are getting fucked in the rain as well, and both couples run through various positions. Both pairings are well shot and pretty hot, the rain providing an interesting element you don't see very often in porn. Janine in particular looks great wet all over, and she wanks a prodigious cumshot out of her man that makes you wonder if perhaps Peter North and Rodney Moore might both be under those rags. Janine's always a dynamic performer and this scene is a good one for her. Jenna Jameson's a little more passive, eventually letting her guy finish himself off on her face, and if she doesn't look like she enjoyed it nearly as much as Janine did...well, that's a high bar to reach.

After their rainy scene -- usually rain equals rebirth, but porn is different -- they end up (now wearing tall PVC boots and metal bikinis) in some sort of restaurant. Janine thinks that the ominous 'he' is awake, but there's no choice for them except to visit the Deadly Sin diner. The Diner serves up Deadly Sins, apparently in both senses, since Lust, Greed, Vanity and so on appear to be both customers and menu items. Just to get it straight, the spectacle at the diner consists of Lust, in the delectable person of Katja Kassin, servicing first Greed (Vincent Vega) and then Wrath (Tommy Gunn) and then both of them at the same time.

Hades awaits in his throne room, a winter wonderland of drifting snow and cavorting minions. Janine offers Hades (played by Sterling again) her immortal soul, something she has been keeping from him for her entire stay there, in exchange for the right to keep Jenna Jameson as her personal slave. I should say here that Hades is fun, a whiny, depressed cad with multiple avatars. He has Jenna service him while Janine takes on a minion. He also frequently appears off to the sides to watch himself fucking Jenna, which I would totally do if I could. Again, Janine is the more dynamic performer, but Jenna Jameson is no slouch, eventually getting Hades off. At the crucial moment, apparently when the Lord of Darkness is distracted, Janine grabs a pitchfork, urges Jenna to repeat her dying words, a plea for redemption, and the two vanish from Hell, reappearing in Jenna Jameson's formerly gloomy and blood-streaked bathtub.

A torrid lesbian scene follows, interrupted at times by images of the suicide, Jenna's former boyfriend, and Hades contemplating his handiwork; the finale includes Jenna and Janine masturbating side by side with candles in their assholes (in porn, apparently, asshole candles symbolize rebirth). But are they reborn? It's hard to tell. Things happen that indicate maybe not, and the truth is that there isn't a lot to grab onto to make the case either way.

As a narrative, Janine Loves Jenna is a little haphazard, the result of too much artistic inclination. There's a story there, but it's not as compelling as the director wanted it to be, and it doesn't really bring anything new to the table that other ambitious porn auteurs haven't tried. It's not bad, it just doesn't matter much; in the face of the sex, however, you won't mind that the story is weak. As mentioned, Janine in particular is dynamic and exciting, and if Jenna Jameson has shed almost all of the freshness that made her a star, she is still undeniably still a near-perfect icon of sexuality. The production values run to the high end of middling -- the camera work and editing are good, with fair but unspectacular special effects; the sets are a little flimsy, without much depth and no real sense of space -- you never get the feeling that you're not on a porn soundstage.

There are a couple of genuinely creepy moments, most notably in the little heart-to-heart between Jenna Jameson and Janine immediately following their first scene together in Hell, but for the most part it's just basic stuff. The soundtrack, a series of songs by a band called the kHz, is outstanding -- driving and coherent, and reminiscent of Garbage or Curve in their darker moments. The extras disc contains long samples of each song, in addition to a BTS reel, bloopers and outtakes, a bonus masturbation and sex scenes, and the usual previews, websites and photo gallery.

In Janine Loves Jenna, there are certain plotlines that offer a maximum of opportunity for the characters to get fucked left and right without recourse to sense or logic; chief among these is the trip through Hell (or what the main character, usually a woman, believes is Hell). This device offers as well the maximum excuse for foreboding music, smoke, exotic costumes, and religious imagery, and it is indeed a popular one. Despite its name, Janine Loves Jenna is a trip-through-hell title, another odyssey through the subconscious of a tormented woman (and, on another level, of another porn director).... Read the Full Review!