Okay, here I am thinking that Pavel Novotny or Jan Dvorak has a clown face that breaks into hilariously comical facial contortions during sex. Obviously that's because I haven't seen Vilem Cage in action yet. This guy is seriously demented - in between pumpings, he licks his lips in an exaggerated manner, opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish, or makes all kinds of comical sounds that has me shrieking in laughter. How anyone actually completes a sex act with him without howling in laughter and ruining the mood, I will never know. Even when he's not pumping away between some guy's thighs while trying very hard to be just like Joker from those Batman cartoons, he's batting his eyelashes comically or puckering his lips like he's auditioning to be a talking chimpanzee in the next Shrek movie. It's a pity that I can easily mute the sound he is making but I cannot stop the camera from zooming in on his howler monkey facial impersonations, because otherwise this is a good-looking strapping hunk.

Like most East European movies though, this is one movie best enjoyed if you're looking for scenery rather than actual good sex scenes. Vilem puts more energy in his plastic facial contortions than in his sex scenes. The Back Room could have been an interesting movie about a straight-acting hunk whose bone every guy wants to jump on when they are not renting the back room of his store for their sexual trysts, but while the set-up is well done, the actual sex scenes are the typical pathetic licks on the tip of penises passed off as "blow jobs" and the butt thrusts have the energy of a broken electric toothbrush.

Still, the guys are very easy on the camera. Vilem Cage is a handsome man when he's not in his more excitable moments, Ondra Seky is almost obscene in how beautiful he is, and Salbo Kopecky looks like a perfect boy-next-door type. Pavel Novotny has star billing but his role is minor, although compared to these lame gay-for-pay dudes, he comes off like the second coming of a gay Casanova in his scenes. Normally Pavel Novotny and Vilem Cage in the same movie would mean that the Joker Antichrist will shortly follow, but Pavel's face is surprisingly non-elastic here. Maybe he had a Botox treatment shortly before filming or something.

To sum it up, I've seen better, I've seen worse, and The Back Room is somewhere in the middle of the pack. The guys are cute but I can't help thinking that I'd like them better when they are clothed, because then they won't flop around lamely in fake organisms and making me compare them to dead fish.

Rating: C