Up For Grabs 3: Briana Banks

Running Time: 86 min.

Production Date: 1 / 25 / 2001, 2 / 26 / 2001. 12 / 28 / 2000, 9 / 3 / 1999. and 12 / 28 / 2000

Director: None listed (for obvious reasons)

Cast: Briana Banks, Nina (who’s listed in the opening credits as Sonja Redd), Venus, Sky Taylor, Tanya Danielle, Bobby Vitale, Todd Alexander, and Ian Daniels

Initial Expectations: Both Up for Grabs Vol. 1 and Up for Grabs Vol. 2 were about as enjoyable as having the fleas of a thousand camels invade your underwear. Needless to say, I’m not expecting anything out of this one.

Initial Reaction: It’s the best of the series, which makes it about like going in to have a cavity filled rather than having your teeth pulled.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who’s both blind and deaf

Who Should Avoid It: Sober people

Audio /Video Quality: The audio is average, but does have some balance problems. The video is much better than in the previous installments, but that’s kind of like saying you’re only standing up to your nipples in crap rather than up to your chin. Once again it’s very grainy, almost as if it was shot with film and no budget. The lighting is extremely inconsistent and there are normally a lot of shadows to interfere with the video. Most of the feature takes place outside, and it doesn’t look like any extra lighting was used. Just think of Ed Powers with about half the lighting budget and you’ll be really close.

Music: The music has a kind of techno feel that’s way too loud and sometimes even the only audio. I’m guessing it’s this loud to cover up the people screaming “PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!!”.

Menus: The menu has some soft clips from the feature that are animated together that gives the DVD a kind of nice opening. It keeps the same style in the chapter menu, which doesn’t work well at all. You’re given a clip of each scene, but can barely tell who’s in each scene even if you knew each of the performers.

The Feature: Up for Grabs Vol. 3 follows the previous train wrecks in the series in the same style. It’s a series of unrelated sex scenes with absolutely no setup to any of the scenes. The only thing that at first appears to set them apart from other features like this, other than such a juvenile job that it makes the original Atari! high tech is that it can be viewed as a standard feature or with an interactive option. I’ll get into the interactive option in the Extras portion of the review, so for now, let’s get on with the sex!

Briana Banks starts things off with Bobby Vitale. Bobby kisses her on the mouth and then drops down to kiss her on the lips and lick her brown eye. She returns the favor by taking Bobby down her throat before flopping on her back for Bobby to poke her pussy. Briana also lets Bobby fuck her from behind before taking an impressive facial. Although Bobby and Briana seem to be really into each other to the point that there’s a good scene here, the technical aspects make this one fight to get close to average. The lighting is changing almost constantly, and varies between bad and almost average. It’s really too bad since I have the feeling that Bobby and Briana put everything into this scene that should be needed for a great scene.

Venus, a cute brunette, and Tanya Danielle, a cute bleached blonde, get busy by a pool next. After a little kissing, Venus moves down to taste Tanya’s twat, which Tanya appears to have had neatly shaven for the occasion. Venus works it over with both her tongue and fingers before sliding a toy in, and also licks Tanya’s ass as she fucks her from behind. Tanya returns the favors in kind, first tonguing and fingering Venus’ twat and then working it over with a toy. Once again, this felt like it should have been a very good scene, but the technical aspects held it back. It’s also held back by the common all girl problem of having the scene run out of time rather than coming to an actual ending. It’s better than the opening scene, since natural light is used and the girls occasionally behind a hedge that hides them from direct exposure, but there’s still quite a bit of inconsistent lighting.

Nina, a cute blonde, takes on Todd Alexander after playing with him and a garden hose. No, we don’t get to see if she can suck a golf ball through it, but I think she might be able to after watching her suck shaft. She gets rewarded with some nice pussy licking before they move to the tennis court where Nina gets boned from behind while leaning over the net. They move back to the lawn for a little missionary before the scene cuts to the two of them talking about tennis with the cameraman. I couldn’t help but think that Todd couldn’t perform in some manner, but it does go back to the scene where they work through a sitting position before Nina goes back for a quick missionary and takes a facial. It’s a pretty good scene that has some decent energy and chemistry. There’s a fun feeling to the sex, despite a couple plot-like and otherwise unrelated sequences getting in the way and bringing it down. Nina’s very impressive here, and is somebody I think I’d like to see a little more of. She’s obviously very into her scene, and makes it so this one is worth watching.

Sky Taylor stops the madness with Ian Daniels. After kissing her a little, Ian moves Sky onto her back to get easy access to her tipple topped implants, and no doubt to also see if they’ll allow her to hover off the ground. He moves down to mouth her mound before letting her suck his schlong. Sky has shown some great cocksucking ability in the past, and she doesn’t disappoint as she works on Ian. They finish things off in most of the common positions, such as doggie, missionary, and spoon before Sky takes a nice face full of spooge. It’s another decent scene with nice energy. Ian seems kind of like a zombie, but it doesn’t seem to matter to Sky who puts out some good energy.

There are certain things that normally make me afraid of a DVD that I stated when I reviewed the first installment of this series. All of them apply here as well as there, so I’m going to restate them for those who haven’t read that review. The first, which is pretty common, is when the DVD has several production dates. This normally means a cookie cutter feature, where somebody just slaps scenes together. Next, I get worried when there isn’t a director listed. To me, this means that somebody doesn’t want their name on this feature. There’s an old saying about “a face only a mother could love”, and if the mother who did this one doesn’t want to be associated with it, them I normally don’t find much to love about it either. Finally, not listing many people in the cast, or including Ed “Ewwwww” Powers or Dick “Extremely” Nasty in the cast list. Thankfully this doesn’t have either Ed or Dick, but only lists one person in the cast on the cover. It never even lists the entire cast anywhere in the feature! If it isn’t bad enough to find one of these things in a feature, Up for Grabs Vol. 3 has all of them.

Believe it or not, Up for Grabs 3: Briana Banks appears to have some decent sex. Each of the scenes has some good chemistry, but unfortunately the camera work kills almost every scene and makes this feature barely unwatchable. You’d be better off taking the money you might spend here and putting it towards a 6 pack of decent beer and a magazine to jerk off to than wasting it here. It’s really too bad, since the cast does appear to do a good job in their scenes.

Extras: Trailers are included for this DVD as well as Up for Grabs Vol. 1 and Up for Grabs Vol. 2. The photo gallery is run as a dual gallery. This gives you the choice of watching it manually or as an auto photo gallery. If you choose to run it manually, you also have the ability to zoom in on the pictures. There’s about fifty snapshots here that look very nice. Once again, not all the scenes in the feature are included in the photo gallery, which seems pretty lame brained.

Finally, there’s the “fantasy mode”, which attempts to make this look like an interactive title. It’s a nice idea, but unfortunately goes about as far as a pedal car with square wheels. You can choose a scene to watch with this feature, and then move around to one of four points in the scene, causing you to go from loop to loop. Even if you choose the cumshot, you’re going into a loop and you won’t get out of it until you choose another area. You also have the same choices regardless of the scene, be it straight, lesbian, or anal. It’s a nice idea, but one that was already done well over a year ago by VCA in White Lightning. Unfortunately for Adam & Eve, VCA also did it much better, which makes this look like an amateurish attempt.

Themes: Straight, rimming (male > female and female > female), lesbian, and toys

Raincoat Factor: Very high

Overall: Normally the Up for Grabs series can be found online for between about $15 and $22 with stores seeming to either have it at the top or bottom. If you’re going to pay that much for this DVD, you better think seriously about checking yourself into rehab. The sex is okay at best and is held back in every scene by the horrible editing and camera work. It also isn’t interactive like everybody else seems to define it.

Note to Adam & Eve: Now that you’ve completed what you’ve advertised in the DVD trailers for this series, please let it die a merciful death.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight

Review from Adult DVD Talk