Lifetime Original Movie: Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life

The film Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life treats the subject of porn addiction with the same subtlety that we have come to expect from the Lifetime Movie Network. Which is to say, the subtlety of an upright piano being thrown from a fourth-story window. Which is to say, this one is a fucking doozy.
Cyber Seduction, directed the great Tom McLoughlin, tells the story of Justin (played by the really untalented kid who was Peter Pan in the inappropriately sexy live-action version from a few years ago. You guys know what I'm talking about?), a hot shot high school swimmer whose life is completely destroyed by internet porno, and his hot mom (holla back, Kelly Lynch), who is too computer illiterate to do anything about it.

Justin is dating one of his swimming teammates, Amy, who is into God and not having sex. So ultimately, I think the point is that if Amy were a little less frigid none of this would have happened.

• Amy spews lots of Seventeen-magazine lines about saving your V-card for the right moment. She's all, "We're not on a schedule." And "It's not that I never want to make love with you. It's just that when we do, I want it to be magical." You can tell Justin's not really having it. She's like, "Look, for me having sex--" and he finishes, pissily, "Has to come from our hearts, I know, I know."
• Thank you, Amy, for explaining the point of this whole stupid movie: she's like, "I don't get the whole porn thing. The way they do it? It's so mechanical. The animal channel shows better relationships." Then Justin of course gives her shit about liking to watch animals do it, 'cause he's a dick.
  
• Justin and Amy discuss their homework. Amy: "Did you read the Kafka?" Justin: "Yeah, the guy wakes up as a cockroach. That would suck." LOL.
• Amy is obviously the child of Bush voters. She tells Justin on the phone, "The Founding Fathers didn't talk about religion, but they were men of faith." Justin tells her, "You know, I think it's tight that you're not afraid to talk about your faith." This is undercut some by the fact that he is caressing a lingerie model's breasts with his computer cursor at the same time.
• Justin makes fun of Amy for liking Switchfoot. She's all, "It's better than the stuff you listen to," to which he replies, "Green Day rules!" I think this youtube commentor said it best:
  

It is to be expected that one of the most delightful things about this movie is Lifetime once again missing the mark hardcore on how any kind of technology works.

• Justin looks at porn in pretty much the dumbest and most nonsensical ways ever. He downloads all sorts of pictures and then saves them to CD-Rs. And as if that's not leaving enough glaring evidence of his porn problem, he labels the CDs--his mom finds one that has "VIRGINAL VAGINAS" (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) written on it.
• As is so often the case, instant messaging is a huge factor in Justin's downfall. (I imagine he's using the Teen Playa platform.) One person sends him a link to "@Big Breasted Women." (Nice random @ there, Lifetime. Feels very internet-y.) There's also awesome typos, obviously: "party at my house. be thier." "you'r sooooo amazing." "when can we get togather?"
• Awesome! Justin downloads porn onto Amy's palm pilot and then emails it to himself. His email? "Justin@e-mail." The email's subject line? "good stuff." Totally LOLz. Also, after he gets his little brother addicted to porn, the kid emails pictures of "Sexy Teens" to himself (Alex@e-mail, naturally) under the subject "a note to myself."
• The shit hits the fan some when Amy looks in her palm pilot's history and sees all the shit that Justin's been looking at on there--the aforementioned "Big Breasted Beauties," in addition to "College Hotties," "3D Babes" (???), "Colossal Cleavage" and the "Best Legs Ever." There is also weirder stuff--"Super Sluts" and "Tender Toes"!!!!!!!!
• Okay Lifetime, this is skirting the outrageously implausible, even for you: Justin's mom gets rid of their internet, so Justin just steals her credit card, enters its numbers into something on their computer, and it's all "You are now free to use the internet." Are we supposed to think he was entering the information on a website? Because you have to have the INTERNET to access websites.
  

Justin's parents, the poor saps, are helpless against the all-powerful Big Breasted Beauties.

• His hot mom has to ask her co-worker whether there's some way to see what someone has been looking at on the internet. The co-worker tells her, with only slightly no-duh delivery, about how to access a browser's history, but warns her, "Any kid worth his mouse knows how to clear the history." Word. Hot mom is all "What's that mean?" When the co-worker explains it, hot mom says, "This internet is getting scary."
• At one point, the family computer explodes with pornography, with a deluge of windows of Sexy Teens and 3D Babes flooding the screen. The parents ineptly press at the keyboard, all like "What do we do? Uh--press escape? Oh God!"
• The mom finally gets parental control software (It's called BLOXXX. LOL.), but has to have Justin's little brother help her install it. He tells her, "Mom, you know we can get around the software, right?" Lifetime viewers, be warned.
• In places, Lifetime is almost breaking the fourth wall with its Mom fear-mongering. The school principal, after Justin has "hacked through the school's firewall" and saved a bunch of porn to his flash drive, tells his parents: "He's not the only student with this type of problem. Since all this new technology makes the internet more available, pornography addiction has become more common."

But you guys? Technology is just one aspect of Lifetime's all-inclusive not-getitude of young people stuff. Like--everyone thinks Justin is the hottest shit ever because he's a good swimmer. Sorry swim team guys, but you are dorks.

• Head jock Timmy tells another jock who asks about Justin, "He's a swimmer, butthead. Best 100 freestyler in the whole damn state. Don't you listen to the announcements?"
  
• Sluttish senior Monica is totally trying to get in his Speedo. She's all "I've heard you're quite a fish in the pool. I bet you look incredibly hot in one of those tiny bathing suits."
• They also call him "Stroke Man" which is an awkward but appropriate nickname for several reasons.

Ooooh teenager party scene! Thank you Jesus! Because this is Lifetime, it is obviously a pool party, but the real action is going on inside. So the kiddos are sitting around the living room looking at porn on the internet. I mean, duh. They're on the popular search engine "Snoop EZ." One jock says to another "Hey dude, type up 'naked college babes.'"

But even though Timmy and his goons got Justin into this porn stuff, they turn on him pretty hardcore when he starts to get freaky about it.

• Justin's at Timmy's and he's all, "I found this pretty extreme website last night." It's a site with "Latex Bondage" pictures. Timmy's grossed out and is afraid of getting spam from the website--like you get worse spam from yuckier porn sites, I guess.
• The jocks gang up on Justin in the locker room about the S&M stuff. They call him "Leather boy" and "Kinky the Clown." Justin's all, "Yeah, well, I like to watch a bit of porn before swim practice. It jacks me up a bit." Uhhhh huh.

And it's even worse when Justin refuses Monica's advances. She not only chases him out of her house in a snarling rage when he won't have sex with her, she bonks her own head on her sink so it looks like he beat her up. Then all the jocks find him and beat the shit out of him. Oh porn, it's all your fault! You are the fucking worst!!!


xo,
MMJ