A sense of anarchistic fun prevails whenever Playback's subversive subplot awakens to treat us to scenes from Big Al's Hot Clips, a raucous cable access program which alternately screens cheesy commercials for fast food fish restaurants and "amateur" porn. Alas, Big Al and his hirsute gorilla-costumed sidekick have little to do with the main story, which pairs Steph and Tice as a couple of bankruptcy-bound swingers.

The ensuing melodrama plays like a discarded script from one of these direct-to-video softcore films, wherein Steph meets a porn producer and all of a sudden their financial problems are solved - as long as she keeps her sexual side-life a secret from Tice. (Yawn... time for the seventh inning stretch here).

The Big Al scenes, while not exactly smoldering in the typical Elegant Angel manner, do manage to rise one's interest, and include a fair amount of anal and d.p. sessions, the best of which are represented by cute Liza Harper and her ass-eating cohorts Van Damage and Michael J. Cox. Covergirls Coral Sands and Charlie Tangle with a big of satisfying toe-to-pussy action, and the opener with Marc Wallice finds him laying some bent pipe up the hindquarters of an enthusiastic brunette. These scenes almost take one's mind off the purely vanilla plot. Overall, a decent tape for couples.