DVD Review: “Janine Loves Jenna”

"Janine Loves Jenna" is the most anticipated porn movie of the past several years. Though it's just hitting the shelves this week, it was made in 2005, which is like 1989 to you and me.

It is a movie with a moral: no matter how distraught you are after your limo driver doesn't pay attention to the road because he's watching you fellate your partner in the back seat and wrecks the car, killing her, it is a sin to kill yourself.*

The suicide in question is Miss Jenna Jameson, and her recent real-life worries make a movie about her "journey through Hell" seem ripped from the headlines. Just remember, though, that this film opens with a fatal car crash and a suicide. Are you hard yet? - GP

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Janine Loves Jenna

Studio: ClubJenna
Director: Justin Sterling
Cast: Jenna Jameson, Janine Lindemulder, Justine Joli, Justin Sterling, Manuel Ferrara, Julian, Dominica Leon, Jerry, Reno, Nicole Brazzle, Veronica Lynn, Cherokee, Sativa Rose, Tommy Gunn, Katja Kassin, Vera Vanguard, Naudia Nyce, Horace, Mario Rossi, Envy, David Lavern, Dolph DeBernenal, Vincent Vega

Review by Gram Ponante

Like all porn movies and rock videos dealing with the underworld, the place is sexy. Dudes in red capes wave censers while Janine goes down on Justine Joli. Jenna, an initiate, is then brought into the threesome. If this sounds abrupt, it is. No sooner has Jenna slit her wrists in a bathtub of despair that she winds up in Hell (which is how it works in the Bible, too) and in a sapphic menage a trois. Abrupt also characterizes the shots; we don't hold long enough on any one image to get a rise out of it.

If it hard enough to believe that a tryst with Janine and Justine Joli would occur in Hell, it is unfathomable that Jenna gets on top when the dildos come out.

Janine explains (and it is revealed that Janine was the dearly fellated departed in the limo) that she understands this place, and it is not Hell per se, but its vestibule. And she knows how to get out. They plot their escape. Janine points to a monitor where there appears to be a Kink.com scene going on.

"Don't let that distract you," Janine says.

For some reason, Jenna and Janine, wearing kimonos and wielding parasols, hook up with some dudes in a rain-soaked alley.

Then, at the Deadly Sin Diner, the girls are in shiny bikinis and encounter a waiter reminiscent of guys one meets at adult webmaster conventions. He recommends Lust with a side of Greed. Katja Kassin makes greed look good.

Finally, the girls reach Hades himself. He decides to take Jenna for a spin, as the depravity around him has grown boring. Seriously, if pornfolk paint Hell as a crazy joyride of mindless fucking that they want to escape, how would they define what they do for a living?

One way to escape Hell, the film reveals, is to look hot naked (this also works for speeding tickets). Jenna wakes up in her bloody bathtub, somewhere before or after wrist-slashing, and has the film's best scene with Janine here in the real world, complete with choking and candles in the butt (which I first saw in "Pirates", also starring Janine, which was filmed after "J<3J").

I will not tell you how the film ended. Not because I feel spoilers are wrong in porn movies but because I didn't understand it. Did she commit suicide or didn't she? Justin Sterling finds her in the bathtub. He seems sad about it.

"Janine Loves Jenna" pairs a generation's last porn superstars. They are the same age as women who in gonzo movies would be considered MILFs, but Jenna and Janine retain the glamour expected of early '90's performers.

Why producers thought that what will probably be the final super twosome (unless Jenna makes a movie with Tera, which seems unlikely) should be set in a BDSM Hell rather than, say, having the two be hardened but sexy cops is beyond me, but my picture of Hell has always involved people I don't want to have sex with.

Solid acting (especially from the guy who played the Devil), sex scenes that get better as the movie goes along, and a great couple of scenes from two fan favorites make J Hearts J worth watching. The locale, however, is beneath them.

· Buy "Janine Loves Jenna" (gamelink.com)
· ClubJenna (clubjenna.com)

* Update: We have been informed by a Vatican II scholar that, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church at least, suicide doesn't necessarily guarantee damnation anymore (= it isn't a mortal sin). Further research reveals that suicide is considered merely a "grave sin" that is up to the Creator to judge. This is great news because I judge too much already. But no one is going to convince me that it wasn't a mortal sin to release the Kim Kardashian tape.

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Previously: Preview: "Janine Loves Jenna", Jenna Loves Everyone, Quickies: Jenna Jameson, Jenna Fatigue?, "Jenna Loves Pain", Jenna Vs. Tera: Clash Of The Titanesses, ClubJenna Exodus: Porn Stars Run Free, Porn Valley Dispatch Archive