Hollywood Goes Ding-Dong Crazypants

Let's talk about penises.

You don't see a lot of them on film these days, or at least films that you can see in mainstream theatres. So when one does make a rare appearance, it's like a shy forest creature peeking out of the underbrush. One is tempted to make breathy noises, and say, ''Awww…don't scare it away.''

But this is the summer of ''peen'' whether they're for hire (Magic Mike XXL), captured in 3D action (Gaspar Noé's Love) or even made out of rubber.

Really, what would a slim little film like The Overnight be without giant rubber dingers: just another story about middle class wieners moaning on about their relationship problems. Add in a little bit of stunt penis and -- hello, nurse! – you've got something.

Although to be perfectly blunt, what you get with The Overnight is far less than you might have hoped for. It's always better in your head, it seems, as long as it doesn't poke you in the eye.

The Overnight stars Jason Schwartzman, Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling and newcomer Judith Godrèche. The two couples are respectively Alex (Scott) and Emily (Schilling) and Kurt (Schwartzman) and Charlotte (Godrèche). The fact that this film is a sex comedy is made explicit in the opening scene where Alex and Emily are introduced in flagrante delicto. Except it isn't so delicto. The couple breaks off in mid-coitus to manually come to orgasm, quite separately from each other. The arrival of their young son summarily puts an end to all these activities. So things aren't going too well in the bedroom, or anywhere else it seems.

Along with their son RJ, Alex and Emily have recently arrived in L.A. Even as they're attempting to settle into their new Californian lives, one gets the sense that problems have a way of following people where ever they go. Emily works all the time. Alex is lonely and emasculated as a stay-at-home dad. Sex is only the most obvious of their problems. If you're like me, you may already be slightly bored and irritated with this couple right off the bat. It is a soft start of sorts, but all this foreplay is only designed to get us to the main event.

Later that afternoon, Alex, Emily and RJ meet Kurt (Schwartzman) and his son Max at the local park. Although he may look like a Hasidic hipster, Kurt is friendly and extremely enthusiastic. The kids hit it off, and Kurt kindly invites the new family over for dinner. At first everything is groovy, the kids are having a blast, the wine, food and conversation are flowing. In the long gloaming evening of a warm California night, this new friendship appears to be off to a roaring start. Even Alex and Emily, who had made an earlier agreement to bail if things didn't go well, appear to finally relax. It is all easy and charming at first, but there is some new current in the air, some coiling smoke of innuendo and coy remarks. This is a film that never met a double entendre it didn't like.

Swing and a miss?

When the kids are packed off to bed, the adults get down to business.

Out comes the bong, followed by more wine, and then a vigorous bout of sexy dancing. At this point, any halfway aware person would be asking him or herself, ''Where is this going exactly?'' Alex and Emily may be conventional and white-bread, but they're not entirely clueless. Still, the evening is progressing so well, a little suspension of belief doesn't seem out of the question. ''This is California, maybe this is what dinner parties are like,'' says Alex. Even the introduction of outré videos and naked pool time is initially presented as good clean fun. When Kurt takes Alex on a tour of his art studio, where he paints enormous portraits of peoples' anuses, it gets harder to maintain the notion this is, in fact, a dinner party.

At this point, audiences may ask themselves: haven't we been here before? The Overnight has echoes of ’70s swinging sex comedies like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, but the film itself reminded me mostly of was Radley Metzger's film Score. I remember coming across this film, quite accidentally, on television in the mid-90s on Showcase. The premise is simple: two couples meet for dinner in a quaint little seaside town and before long, there is all manner of coupling, employing harnesses, sailor outfits, strap-ons and such. I couldn't believe this film was on television -- good old raunchy Showcase. Metzger's work was often released in both soft and hardcore versions, but the version I saw was definitely the harder one. At the time, the film was notable for its same-sex theme -- the two couples pair off along gender lines, the men in their sailor hats and the women with their capes and harnesses. Although Metzger's films are very much a product of the ’70s softcore moment, try to watch The Image (The Punishment of Anne) and not howl with laughter -- at least they were serious and often seriously funny about sex.

Contemporary films about sex seem to fall into a couple of different categories. Either it's hardcore arthouse -- think Lars von Trier's interminable dreary Nymphomaniac or the torturous work of Gaspar Noé or Catherine Breillat -- or it is dunderheaded comedies starring Jason Segal. Or even worse, it's a film like Fifty Shades of Ick. There is either too much sex (to wit: the joyless clinical acts in Nymphomaniac) or too little (where are the penises?). The upcoming Amy Schumer vehicle Trainwreck purports to upend this dichotomy. I have some hope for this film, given the presence of Ms. Schumer, but it's also directed by Judd Apatow, who has the heart of a closet puritan.

Much has been made about the ''shocking'' boundary-pushing aspects of The Overnight, but despite the presence of giant fake penises, sex is pretty thin on the ground. A peen scene appears to be the film's main claim to notoriety -- namely that its two male stars, Adam Scott and Jason Schwartzman, are depicted full-frontally, flapping and flailing about, shaking their baby-makers for their wives. Oddly enough, watching this unfold, all I could think about was hobbits. Perhaps the least sexy creatures in all of current cinema, but there is something about the thick thatch of hair from which each member springs that made me think of hobbits' feet. Suffice to say, this film, which purports to be all about sexual desire, that most pernicious and persistent of emotions, is kind of terrible at arousing much of it at all.

Certainly, the performers are all charming and doing their utmost to be funny and sweet throughout -- but there is entirely too much banter, altogether too much cuteness. It feels oddly neutered, which is perhaps an odd thing to think about a film that features so much penis. After a while, you just want something physical to happen, so that everyone can shut up for a moment, especially the endlessly voluble men at the centre of the story who never stop talking about themselves. Although the film initially presents as a story about the relationships between men and women, it is the men who get the lion's share of the screen time. Whether it's yammering on about their insecurities and their failings or eyeballing each other's junk. The female characters are definitely second banana and are often given little to do other than react to men. The film then drifts off and leaves you untouched -- entirely unsatisfied.

Hump on, sisters

It's little wonder that the women and a few men are flocking to see Magic Mike XXL. At least there is something of the silly kooky joy that sex can engender, even if you hardly ever see any actual penises. The phenomena of women seeing the film in the theatre and going ding-dong crazypants has been written about all over the place. Grantland's Wesley Morris does a particularly exhaustive job in his essay on the film. But Amy Schumer perhaps summed it up best here. This is a film, after all, in which one of the central characters is a lovely fellow named Big Dick Richie.

The most revolutionary aspect of this film and the summer of penis is the revelatory notion that women make up a huge chunk of the cinema-going audience. Or, as the fine Mr. Morris writes: ''The feat of XXL is that its throngs of attention-starved, hormonally revved women always double as comments on the dusty marketplace conditions. So does all the money that just rains from the sky like confetti. This movie doesn't put you in the mind of a woman. It puts you in her libido. At least for me, what it means to be aroused has undergone a glorious realignment. I wasn't hard when it was over. I was wet.''

So, the big surprise seems to be that women like to look at men dancing around with their pants off. It's not like the male member has never been captured on camera before. Every woman I know queued up the scene of Michael Fassbender getting his kit off in Steve McQueen's film Shame. But so often we are made to feel just that: a bit ashamed and a little guilty about wanting to have a look.

The most revolutionary aspect of a film like XXL is that it says to women, embrace your penis-loving ways, let your freak flag fly high on the pole.

Hump on my sisters, hump on.