The one thing worse than an adult film that's just plain bad is one that has all the elements of a fine production and falls way short of its aspirations. Case in point: Paul G. Vatelli's Sex Games, another of those adult films that borrows story ideas from popular mainstream movies and turns them X-rated. I'll let you guess which film Sex Games is attempting to satirize. You're right!

Kevin James purchases a small home computer, brain-drains the operator of his local computer dating service, hooks his phone lines into his new toy and taps into the dating service's computer. Here he finds all the necessary information about a bunch of kinky women looking for sexual pleasure.

James plays on the various girls' stated fantasies (one would like to be ravaged by a motorcyclist while another wants an artist to paint her, then lay her and so on). HE goes on his various dates, having sex with the likes of Nicole Black and Shana Grant.

With the exception of one ménage-a-trois, the fornication scenes in Sex Games are lifeless. Even Ron Jeremy, usually the dynamo, plods along as if this were a chore. The lighting, often dark, lends the film a grainy, cheap look that simply cannot be tolerated, given today's standards of high-quality adult filmmaking. It seems that maybe in order to capitalize on a popular summer movie hit, the producers thought this one up quickly and shot it without any forethought.

As fro director Vatelli, he really can't be blamed too much. A competent director who has shown promising signs (his earlier work this year, Let's Talk Sex was worth a look, as it promised better things in the future), he seems to have had very little to work with in terms of actors. Kevin James is amiable enough, but the female troupe performs terribly, in one humorless scene after another.

This idea showed promise, but turns out to be a major disappointment. Sex Games is as interesting as watching somebody else program a home computer. How about a game of thermonuclear orgasm?