Pyrates is a 1991 comedy film, starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick about a couple who experience pyrokinesis after having sex.
Plot
When Ari (
Kevin Bacon) and Sam (
Kyra Sedgwick) first meet they realise that there is chemistry between them. When they have sex with each other, they experience
pyrokinesis. However, as their love affair does not run smoothly, their friends Liam (
Bruce Payne) and Pia (
Kristin Dattilo) intervene to try to help. At one point when Sam is angry with Ari, Liam helps Ari to serenade her with a rendition the
Soft Cell song
Tainted Love.
Cast
Reception
Reviews for
Pyrates were generally negative. Derek Adams of
Time Out criticized the film for containing few laughs, stating that "the first time a lava lamp explodes, the second time round though, and the joke's already gone too far".
No Byline stated that 'with the principals coming across as charmlessly self-centred, this cornucopia of copulation is, despite an attempt at kooky episodic to-camera chit-chat, more hot air than hot stuff'.
A reviewer for
TV Guide stated that 'as a contemporary love story,
Pyrates is well conceived and often sharply observed'.
The
TV Guide reviewer stated that '
Kevin Bacon and
Kyra Sedgwick are both charming and exasperating as the modern lovers, a combination of self-centered innocence and mannered brittleness that rings all too true'.
The
TV Guide reviewer also commented that 'the supporting cast, particularly
Bruce Payne and
Kristin Dattilo as the friends who find themselves drawn into Ari and Sam's affair despite their best efforts to stay out, are uniformly good' but 'their work is undercut at every turn by the aggressively clever style' of the film'.
Ultimately, the
TV Guide reviewer thought that 'the director's smirk colors virtually every scene, and it's tough to get past'.
The effect, in their view, 'is that of a glossy thesis film by a precocious and talented student who still needs to learn that all witty ideas are not created equal'.
John Ferguson stated that
Kevin Bacon and
Kyra Sedgwick gave 'it their best shot, but director Noah Stern doesn't take the original idea anywhere interesting and, in the end, it's far too self-consciously wacky for its own good'.
Ferguson also stated that 'Englishman abroad
Bruce Payne - he would drop the middle name for
Passenger 57 - offers solid support as Bacon's best chum'.
Another reviewer stated that the film was a 'real oddity' and part of a 'peculiar mini-spate of films about pyrokinesis' in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which began with
Firestarter.
described the film as 'crudely scripted' and 'ineptly directed'.
Another reviewer described the film as 'forgettable'.
's Sandra Brennan awarded the film a score of one and a half stars out of five.
Home media
The film has been released on DVD in Australia.
External links
