Cyber Seduction

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life
Lifetime (July 2, 2005)
Director: Tom McLoughlin
Cast: Jeremy Sumpter, Kelly Lynch, Lyndsy Fonseca, Jake Scott

View the trailer


Wow. Just... WOW. What else can I say about this movie? Despite being made by Lifetime: Television for Women (or, perhaps, because of it), the trailer to Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life is something else. Sadly, it's just a made-for-TV movie--and one that ultimately must have the moral that being a prudish woman is better than being a Redbull-chugging porn addict--so, despite the film's promising title, the trailer doesn't contain any nudity. And yet...

One click can destroy a mind... a marriage... a family.

This inane slogan is interspersed with what the folks at Lifetime presumably think is drama. And despite the fact that the film's synopsis clearly pegs previously-good-boy-now-turned-porn-addict Justin as the main character, the trailer almost completely ignores his struggle with whether or not to whack it, and instead focuses on the trials and tribulations of MILF mother Diane, as she tries to keep her fragile reality from crumbling down into a pile of porn-addled rubbish. "I can't believe this is happening to us," Kelly Lynch's character Diane confides in a friend, never coming to grips with the fact that her movie son must have come across (pun very much intended) the sex scene, including full frontal nudity, she did in the 1989 movie Warm Summer Rain (safe for work).

However, the trailer notwithstanding, the producers obviously want to have Justin's porn addiction be the crux of the movie. From the synopsis:

"This is an important topic because online porn addiction can affect all ages," says "Cyber Seduction" executive producer Michael Bremer. In fact, according to a recent survey, 90% of eight- to 16-year-olds with Internet access have viewed porn online, mostly while doing homework. "Addicts blur the lines between fiction and fantasy, creating devastating effects on relationships," adds executive producer Paul Goff.

Clearly, there is an epidemic out there, where 9 out of 10 boys cruise around the internet ghettos, snorting crack off of dead hookers, giving blowjobs for loose change, and killing a man just to watch him die, all the while looking for the next big porn fix. Concerned parents thought Cinemax would be the downfall of our society, and clearly its late-night softcore skin flicks have paved the way for greater evils, like stealing your parents' credit card to get access to for-pay porno sites, or--may God have mercy on our souls--drinking Redbull. The usual rallying cry from parents who would rather censor things so that the rest of us can't enjoy our porn want to make the world a better place is, "Won't someone think of the children????" (As an aside, I know there's a Michael Jackson joke in there just itching to be let out, but I'll refrain... for now). However, this only seemed to have spurred on the internet porn industry, which has, quite to its economical benefit, indeed thought of the children when designing their wanking sites.

So, "Can Justin kick this self-destructive habit?" as the synopsis breathlessly asks. Well, considering that this is a movie made for the middle-aged-independent-woman-soccer-moms out there, the answer is a resounding "yes." However, I posit the supposition that Justin's soul will be irrevocably sullied by his three-month flirtation with the darkness known as internet porn. Of course, the trailer hardly pays this a thought, as Diane is not on screen for a grand total of one second during the 30-second trailer. Justin, by comparison, is on screen for a measly eight seconds. I suppose the producers know their audience, and that this audience responds better to a story which, depending on the perspective, is about an independent mother who wants her family to remain spiritually pure, rather than a story about an abrasive bitch who won't let her son whack off to scantily-clothed-yet-not-actually-naked women. Actually, now that I think about it, by not letting her son ogle beautiful women, Diane is really just making sure that Justin becomes that 1 in 10 that doesn't look at porn. She is ensuring that Justin grows up an introverted and repressed loser--someone who will probably eventually molest little children. It really makes sense when you consider that Micahel Jackson was probably too busy being exploited promoted by his parents to ogle beautiful women while growing up.

With all that in mind, I cannot in good conscience give this trailer any stars. Perhaps it would be different if we, the audience, got a good look at what Justin was wanking to--for realism's sake, of course--but sadly this trailer only gives us hints of probably less than fulfilling things to come. But, really, what else can you expect from a channel that plays "The Nanny" eight times every day?