Christopher Saint Booth, Nicholas Steele and their talented team of porno artists for Adam & Eve Productions forego the romantic fantasy mode that is there forte, substituting light-hearted trivia in "The Real Thing". It's eminently watchable but hardly of the caliber fans are accustomed to in turn of this century Couples XXX features.
Dale DaBone top-lines, frequently turning to the camera to address asides directly to the audience, as a henpecked husband of Jewel De'Nyle, who fantasizes a freer, sexier existence without her, Walter Mitty style. The loosely connected sex vignettes revolve around a rather poor gimmick of watching a black and white Western movie on TV, in which Steven St. Croix (getting a foolish billing as one "Jean Luc Goddard") and Heather Lynn star, their dialog endlessly repeated as to "is this the real thing?" that lends itself to the video's title.
The stand-alone fantasies include two scenes set in a grocery store: a quality threesome of big-dicked Lee Stone humping both Bridgette Kerkove and Gauge, the femmes representing respectively the fake and the natural look of porn stars; as well as a satisfying hump scene of star Nikita Denise with DaBone.
European imports figure prominently in the cast list, as a lesbian threesome features not only Denise but Dutch beauty Terri Summers and Hungarian honey Orchidea. Packaging of the DVD stresses the shrew played by Jewel, who gets her proverbial rocks off not with hubby so much as with TV repairman Mark Davis. It is interesting to note that in the more-informative-than usual BTS short subject, Jewel is looking forward to doing a d.p. that day with Davis and Jason McCain, but in the scene as edited McCain arrives at her home with Davis but immediately splits and has no sex footage in the movie at all -Jewel having to satisfy herself with just some anal action by Mark.
Booth's varied musical score is evocative as always, but in support of rather routine Steele stagings, the great auteur looking rather disinterested in the project if the BTS is any barometer, highlight being his horsing around on set with St. Croix.
