Tomcats (2001)

In Tomcats, a shameless raunch and gross-out burlesque, the scene that the kids will be talking about isn't the one in which Jake Busey, as an ebullient male slut (the actor looks as if he's warming up to star in ''The Charlie Sheen Story''), boinks a drunken teenage girl, who proceeds to vomit out the window of her daddy's car, her queasy spasms only exciting him more. It's not the one in which Jerry O'Connell, as the proverbial goo' guy who looks like a frat-house John Ritter, picks up a librarian and watches her quick-change into a snarling dominatrix. No, it's the one in which a surgically removed cancerous testicle goes bounding like a Super Ball all over a hospital, finally landing in a place that may inspire ''Ughs!'' from the most hardened of bodily fluid comedy mavens. John Waters, ralph your heart out.

Written and directed by Greg Poirier, a former writer of triple-X porn films, ''Tomcats'' is a satire, as well as an exploitation, of the paranoia lurking within unbridled male lust. It's built around one of those ''only in the movies'' contests in which a half-dozen guys compete to see who can stay unmarried the longest, yet in its mingling of horniness and disgust, ''Tomcats'' attains a convoluted cleverness. Shannon Elizabeth, from ''American Pie,'' shows unexpected charm as the girl everyone is after, and there's one amazingly funny sequence in which O'Connell imagines his ultimate flesh nightmare -- not sex, but daddyhood, which suddenly makes sex look very harmless indeed.

You Might Also Like

• Movie Review Tomcats (Mar 30, 2001) | Owen Gleiberman
• Movie News Movies (Jun 29, 2001) | Owen Gleiberman, Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Best of 2001 ''Town and Country'' and ''The Mexican'' are 2001's worst movies (Aug 17, 2001)
• Hot Topic Here's what's wrong with the current raunchy movies (Mar 30, 2001) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Movie News ''Spy Kids'' tops the box office (Mar 23, 2001) | Lori Reese
• Movie News Securing permission for a Nirvana track (1995) | Melina Gerosa