Word: boing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That's what Derek does for a career these days. He runs around prostituting his wife, Bo. Granted it's a nice, clean, look-but-don't-touch prostitution: usually in the pages of Playboy, or in the movie theatres. He announces to the public: Look what I get to sleep with every night! And he's quick to point out that nobody photographs her but him. One can hardly blame John for being infatuated with Bo, for she is very beautiful indeed and as long as he wants to show her off and she is willing to go along...
...camera doesn't mean she can act. She can't. Tarzan, the Ape Man. John Derek's latest Let's-Look-at-My-Wife offering, makes this painfully clear. To call her a bad actress is to make a gross understatement. Unlike "10," which asked only that Bo slink around a beach and look pretty--of which she is eminently capable--Tarzan demands that she exhibit a wide range of emotions, and that's where she fails miserably. When she is supposed to be frightened, she squeals: when she should laugh, she giggles; and when she should weep, she whines...
There is something ludicrous about seeing Bo Derek in the deep, dark jungles of 19th century Western Africa, for she is such a product of late 20th century America. Her giggly California high-school pom-pom girl accent does not mesh with the romantic, metaphorical lines she is called upon to recite. When her line reads: "Yes, father, many things in life are like that," her voice says "gimme a large order of onion rings and a vanilla shake." She belongs in an Orange Crush television commercial. She belongs on a beach in Venice. California, or in a dune buggy...
...Bo, as producer and star, and her husband John, as director and cinematographer, have basted together a new Tarzan, which the descendants of Author Edgar Rice Burroughs tried futilely to suppress. The story is familiar and faithful: Jane Parker (Bo) and her great white hunter father (Richard Harris) trek through the jungle and find the Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe). But the plot is so much crinoline for Bo to shuck before cavorting au naturel with Tarzan or monkeying around with wildlife...
...wallow in me!" trumpets Harris, and he does indeed: he wades hippo-deep through the rank mud of his loopy monologues. The generously muscled O'Keeffe utters not an intelligible word-only Tarzan's patented bull-elephant yodel. As for Bo's acting, she sucks in her stomach to look pretty and chews her cuticles to suggest fear. Alas, all the displays of Bo's body cannot divert attention from the ludicrous ineptness of the enterprise. Nothing breaks a tumid erotic spell faster than giggling...