After watching the recent BBC interview with Joan I decided to see what her standard of work was, after it was famously derided as being secondary to Jane Birkin. The Stud was a UK smash however that isn't saying much as anything which was a UK movie and promised lots of sex generally was. The Stud is basically a UK budget Saturday Night Fever but with more sex and a really terrible disco soundtrack which apparently sold tons. When people talk down about disco they generally mean the kind in this movie however there was some great quality disco which is still on rotation today. Although there are also a significant number of actual chart hits from recognised artists in the soundtrack as well. Roxy Music etc..
This is based on an obviously trashy woman's novel penned by Joan's sister and the story is all kinds of stupid. It's about some working class guy who ends up managing some crappy upmarket nightclub and sleeps with upper class women, the main one being Joan's character. Throw in some double dealings, adultery and barely legal sex along with overly dramatic fall outs and its all very trash novel by numbers. The problem is that the movie is about a man and its written by a woman who has no clue about men. Its actually misandrist in some aspects and its probably the first representation of a himbo I have every seen. We are expected to believe that a guy who has access to pretty much any woman suddenly "falls in love" after a one night stand with a 16 year old, and that the same 16 year old ( a virgin) could manipulate what is basically a hyper experienced womaniser. Make it make sense. The other odd male character is the apparently rich bit older husband of Joan who seems to find enormous happiness after divorce as if he has just got out of jail and isn't on the hook financially to his ex. Rather odd. And that brings me to Joan's character arc. Simply no. While I understand this is written by a trash author Joan's character seems to be of the Tommy Wiseau mood swing school of acting. For someone who has just been caught cheating and divorced she seems to bounce back pretty quick. While this was her most famous movie role she was a 45 year old woman in this movie getting her kit off. She does look her age. Her character is also quite odd, she seems to be very confident but based on what exactly? She doesn't appear to have any skills or profession and she's heading into menopause. So its quite hard to see the appeal of her as a character and her male co-lead isn't exactly likeable either. As such its actually quite a bitter movie. A sequel was made which was less successful and no doubt Jackie must have thought they had cracked it. Its probably never dawned on her that the movie wasn't popular because of the story or production, it was simply riding the wave of acceptable sex movies and disco they 70's was known for. There is a reason why this isn't on UK TV much and its because its simply a bad movie, even if it did make some money at the time. Still, there wasn't much choice back then was there?
Review of The Stud
