Deadly Pursuits

Tori Spelling is an erotic dancer who... well, what's the point in going any further? You already know this is going to be worthwhile. Okay, honestly we missed the first half-hour of this, and we have a hunch that's when most of the erotic dancing took place, but we're okay with that. Really. We got a taste of her skills when the sweet music of a street saxophonist compelled her to bump and grind her new boyfriend right there on the sidewalk. Let's back up: her new boyfriend is some Ivy League dude who is looking for his dad, who has gone in hiding because Richard Belzer (playing a Colombian drug lord) wants to kill him. Whatever. The point is this buttoned-up nice kid gets mixed up with "bad girl" Tori and the result (for the viewer, anyway) is sheer pleasure.

Tori looks like she stepped right off the set of 90210. She has a crazy new hairstyle every 10 minutes, and she has a half-shirt for every occasion. Dining out? Half-shirt. Shooting bad guys? Half-shirt. She also gets some great lines, like "I picked a fine day not to wear a bra" and "I always cry when I'm drunk." She's horribly miscast, of course. Tori Spelling seems to us like a tightly wound kind of gal, and her attempt at playing a giggly free-wheeler reminds us of when Madonna tried the same thing in Who's that Girl? It's embarrassing, except that Tori doesn't seem embarrassed, so that makes it okay for us to enjoy it. Right? Right?

Rating: 6. Not nearly enough erotic dancing. Though that could be our fault for missing the first half-hour. We blame ourselves.



"Hi, I'm Tori, and this behind me is my white ceiling."