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Customer Reviews of Penthouse: Sweet Chocolate

A new low from Penthouse. What a wasted opportunity.
Penthouse: Sweet Chocolate
Starring: Crystal Knight, Erica, Lexi, Jennifer, Mason, Midori, Monica, Roshun, Juliette.
I've really had it with Penthouse these days. At one point this company produced some of the best soft-core features around 'they pushed the boundaries of the genre, had fresh, beautiful women, and decent production values. Without counting the mediocre Eurogirls series, or Private label, the last half-decent features Penthouse had were the Play-Off and Pet of the Year flicks for 2003. The direction was pretty bad as was the editing, but they were saved by the likes of Sunny Leone, Aria Giovanni, and Suzette Spencer. Penthouse hasn't had a complete knockout since 2002's sequel to Pets in Paradise. They were on a good run there for a while between 1999 and 2002, but they've really slacked off in recent years. Instead of fresh models we get seasoned porn stars (read as 'ladies with lot's of mileage'). If these women were actually acting like they were in a Penthouse feature as opposed to something tamer, I would have fewer complaints, but there we go.
Penthouse had a chance to redeem themselves with South of the Border, with the promise of Latin ladies and a return of girl-girl scenes after their absence in the abysmal College Cuties. There was very little of each to be found, and the production wasn't worth watching after the second scene was over.
When Sweet Chocolate came around I was very worried, but reasoned that Guccione and the boys couldn't keep producing the same crap they've been passing off under the Penthouse label. I was wrong.
First off Penthouse has taken a sure-fire winner of an approach and screwed it up. I can't remember any African-American women in any of their past features, so this was a long overdue surprise. However, Penthouse drafted a handful of porn stars instead of models, and didn't seem to care much about looks or sensuality. In fact some of these women just don't look that great. Most of them look used and there's only one girl in this whole video that I was certain that had natural breasts.
Porn star Crystal Knight starts us off in the pool with a really tame solo scene that spends more time on here face than anything else. She runs out of 'sexy' expressions quickly and repeats the same look over and over again. We're still at the same pool, but at a different angle in the second scene. Here we kick off with the one-name gals. Erica's boob job has to be one of the worst I've seen in a long time. It's like two rock-hard balls on the extreme right and left sides of her chest. The third scene moves inside to a shower (Okay, we get the point! Women in water . . .Sheesh) with Lexi, who not only manages to keep her heavy makeup on in the spray, but looks like a trashy hood-rat. She does get a little more explicit than some of the others with the showerhead near the end, but it's not very erotic. (Holly Hollywood did a much better, sexier, more explicit version of this in Playboy's Model Solution, a soft-core film I readily recommend.)
Surprise! We're on dry land in the next scene. Jennifer and Mason do a little rolling around on a bed, and not much else. This is the only scene featuring a woman that's 100% natural without question in the whole feature. Well, the next scene takes us back to the same pool as before with seasoned porn veteran Midori. She's been around so long that Plastic Fantasy made an action figure out of her a few years back. By the time she actually starts giving the camera a decent shot the scene's over. Now we're back inside on a couch with Monica and Roshun, neither of which look all that great or do much more than kiss a few times. In fact, it's almost a PG-13 sequence, as the girls are only show their tops for 90 % of the scene, and not much else. I almost fell asleep. The last scene is the best of the whole feature, and not only because it's the end. Juliette may have fake breasts as well, but they're nicely done and look great. This girl has a full set of curves and knows how to use them. She was the only girl on this whole thing that actually turned me on. None of these ladies came anywhere close to being as explicit past Penthouse features. You see much more in Playboy videos or on late-night pay channels than in these recent releases.
Judging from production values, this flick was shot at someone's house on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Not to mention that the cameramen don't always pay attention to their subjects. There are a few times where the camera drifts down a little too far and goes off the subject onto the ground or something, then jerks back up. It's like directing by Ed Wood 'one take is all you need. The music editing is equally horrendous: someone put a CD track on repeat. The song fades out after ending then starts up again 'sometimes in the middle. Yikes.
I'm no longer buying features from Penthouse. I have lost complete faith in Guccione and crew. They should be ashamed to release cheap garbage like this under a label that used to stand for quality and eroticism.

Pros: Penthouse finally features African-American women, Juliette's sequence.

Cons: Said African-American women don't look all that great, the audio and visual editing is awful, if I wanted to see porn stars I would have rented porn 'for cheaper, and would have gotten more out of it, officially heralds the death of Penthouse's feature presentations. (Three strikes & you're out: College Cuties, South of the Border, Sweet Chocolate.)