I was shocked to see that this movie scores so low on IMDb, it is definitely one of my personal favourites.The plot seems to be the problem for most of the reviewers who didn't like the film. Well, what can I say other than it was taken right out of Boccaccio's famous Decamerone. Boccaccio being one of the most famous of all Italian writers EVER, and yes, he loved sexy, dirty stories with lots of rather ridiculous characters. (His works are available on Project Gutenberg.)What I like about it? It's tastefully sexy (yes, I love beautiful nudes), it contains some interesting characters like Tim Roth as Gerbino de la Rata, I especially like the first encounter with Count Dzerzhinsky and their exchange of words, Count Dzerzhinsky himself in his overly self-assured way, seems pretty cool too. The scene with the milkmaids in the cowshed is excellent too, revolutionizing pornography by giving the facial to the men (finally...)Comparing the movie to American teenage flicks like 'American Pie' is definitely an insult that I mind very much. It's about like comparing a Ferrari with a Chevrolet Avalanche.No, it's not deep, but does a movie have to be to be good??? Can it just be fun to watch?

If the folks who made A Knight's Tale all impregnated a sibling and the genetically defective results of those unions all grew up to make an anachronistic, Renaissance Italy sex comedy, it would look an awful lot like Virgin Territory. There's some quality nudity here but an almost total lack of laughs and a host of poor storytelling choices.Lorenzo (Hayden Christiansen) is a young gambler in love with the beautiful Pampinea (Mischa Barton) and on the run from the rich and menacing Gerbino (Tim Roth). Pampinea is also lusted after by Gerbino, even though she's promised in marriage to a Russian count (Matthew Rhys). Lorenzo has to flee Florence to escape Gerbino and his men. Pampinea, some of her friends and a painter impersonating a priest (Craig Parkinson) also decide to leave town, partly because of Gerbino and partly because of the plague.Lorenzo and Pampinea end up in a convent full of sex-crazed nuns while her friends wind up waylaid by some bandits. After some generalized ribaldry, including a police-style penis line up, everybody winds up at a country villa where Gerbino tries to force Pampinea to marry him while Lorenzo and the Russian count try to stop it. The bad guy falls down a well and everybody else locks lips with the sex partner of their dreams.I think I've seen enough film to make a plea. For the love of Zeus, stop with all the voice over narration! It's fairly rare in big budget Hollywood fare, but narration has overrun indy flicks like out of control kudzu. It's one of the laziest crutches filmmakers lean on and you find it over and over and over again in independent cinema. Whether it's used as a shortcut for exposition, characterization and plot mechanics or as a feeble attempt at depth and profundity that doesn't exist in the rest of a script, narration has become so common in a certain class of filmmaking that it's almost become a big, fat warning sign. If you're watching a movie and you hear a narrator within the first 30 seconds, you're probably better off bailing on the film right then and there.That's what I should have done when the voice over from the fake priest started in Virgin Territory. It's intrusive, it takes the audience's attention and emotional investment away from the main characters and, worst of all, the narration is intentionally written to be the most overtly funny thing in the movie. The fake priest is given more deliberately humorous things to say in his narration than all the other characters' dialog put together. The narration isn't all that funny but even if it were, it would still be a mistake to do it that way.The rest of Virgin Territory lived down to that early warning sign. Just as an example, a huge portion of the film's middle is given over to how one of Pampinea's friends is a bitchy cocktease who alternately berates and frustrates her virgin boyfriend. Pampinea, Lorenzo, Gerbino and the Russian count are just forgotten about, and then the cocktease and her boyfriend are forgotten about so a second friend of Pampinea can be brought to the fore and made the second most important female character in the story.And I have to bring up the final sword fight between Lorenzo and Garbino because it's one of the worst structured battles in the history of fiction. First, the movie sets it up that Lorenzo and Garbino will fight and if Garbino wins, he'll then have to fight the Russian count. So the bad guy is facing an unfair challenge to begin with. Then Garbino has to battle Lorenzo on the edge of a deep well after it's been established that Garbino is afraid of heights, putting him at an additional disadvantage. Even if Garbino were the most vile person imaginable, having the deck stacked so clearly against him destroys the good vs. evil dynamic of the climax.Virgin Territory does feature the impressive physique of Kate Groombridge and a few other actresses take their tops off. There's nothing else of value here.

Virgin Territory all together is just a mess of a film. After watching it, I can see why it went straight-to-DVD in the US. The film just lacked comedy, action, adventure and good romance. It felt really cheesy and the acting was pretty bad. The story just wasn't interesting and was sort of foolish. The lead actors; Hayden Christensen and Mischa Barton are pretty much lifeless on screen. Their attempts at British accents are laughable, Christensen is whinny when he should be heroic and his accent sometimes fades within the film, while Barton appears ready to doze off at any time. They both amazingly fail to change their facial expressions for the entire duration. The scenes in which Christensen pretends to be mute might have been his only good moments, but even here he is totally inadequate. Tim Roth was pretty decent in this film given the material he dealt with.When it comes to missed opportunities, it really doesn't get any more disappointing than this. "Virgin Territory" is based on a book filled with stories of sex and debauchery, and yet it somehow manages not only to not be sexy, but neither witty nor engaging on any level. An example of a cheesy sex scene was with two females and two guys performing a sex act with a milk maid and a cow. The film seemed more PG-13 due to its language but was rated R for a few nudity scenes (and they weren't really that good). Overall the film was just a mess and not funny. Don't even bother

This nice, mild version the extremely bawdy Decammeron Nights, was so lightly thought of, it was released directly to DVD in the US.The only reason for the R rating is the a few of the ladies busts are shown,& some suggestive dialogue as same ladies are milking a cow over the clothed body of our hero. What this movie really needed (since the guys are so handsome),was at least a suggestion of some male sex (which was in the original stories). There also should have been at least one whipping or torture scene, or suggestion of. THe above ladies were supposed to be nuns, to me they were not.Hayden Christensen (Star Wars 2 & 3) is not bad as our stalwart young hero. Mischa Barton is delightful as our pure heroine. Matthew Rhys as a Russian suitor is a comic find,( his character has a very long hard to pronounce name) He rattles this name & his lineage a few times & never misses a beat.In fact the entire cast is a delight,The script & direction was by David Leland and is good. The settings are beautiful. This is not a great film or even a good adaptation,it is just an enjoyable pleasant,not bawdy enough treatment.Ratings: *** (out of 4) 83 points (out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 10)