AllMovie

By 2010, movies in which regular people end up in the porn industry through wacky circumstances had become pretty old hat. And "old hat" is exactly how Finding Bliss plays. Though it received a brief theatrical release, Julie Davis' film feels like it should have gone straight to video, as it stars actors who hadn't had a lot going on lately (Leelee Sobieski, Matthew Davis, Denise Richards, Jamie Kennedy), and is so poorly lit, it often resembles actual softcore porn, even when it's not trying to. This is not to say Finding Bliss doesn't have the occasional insight or funny bit. But it's more often haphazard and unfunny. One such bit of haphazardness is another way it resembles an actual porn -- it features a brief and totally pointless scene of full-frontal nudity by Kennedy. He's playing a porn actor in the movie, so the actor's willingness to disrobe could have been germane to the action. Instead, his character drops his pants at a party. Not only is he not being egged on to do it, and not only does it have utterly no purpose or consequence to the story, but no one even reacts to his impromptu flashing. The conclusion is that it was written into the story as a stunt, just because Kennedy said he'd do it. The rest is what you might expect: the porn outsider (Sobieski's character) realizes she has something to learn from this seemingly debauched industry, and likewise, the industry realizes it has something to learn from her comparative legitimacy. Ho hum. It's a shame, because Davis has made some interesting films (All Over the Guy, Amy's Orgasm) in which characters confront their sexual hang-ups. This just isn't one of them.