Almost Heaven by New Sensations - review by Kayla

"Almost Heaven" is a New Sensations DVD that is shot in HD and part of their "Romance" series. For that reason, it is pretty romantic in the storyline, but it is still a "hardcore" movie. There won't be any softcore shots (not featuring genitals) in this movie. The movies uses condoms throughout (Go safe sex!), and it runs at a little short of two hours. Sex actors include Brooke Lee Adams, Danny Mountain, Allie Haze, Xander Corvus, Victoria White, Rocco Reed, Kiara Diane, and Chris Johnson. Yep, that makes four sex scenes in this movie - all scenes are male/female. The director is Eddie Powell.

Since this is a couple's-orientated movie, the box is more classy than just a regular DVD case. The DVD case itself comes in a little cardboard box that opens up to some soft-lit, romantic-looking scenes from the movie. Other movies from the New Sensations Romance series include "Eternal Love", "The Wedding Day", "The Office Romance", "Awakening To Love", and "The Engagement Party". This is a one-disk item. The quality and lighting of the movie was good. The "heaven" parts had a ridiculously white-overlayed type look, but since it was supposed to be heaven, it makes sense. There were some sound issues as well; it wasn't a big deal, but at times, an actor would reposition and a mic would get too loud. The music was never overpowering though. The music was soft, sexy, sensual, and it stayed in the background and out of the way of the action.

I won't "hide" the storyline since it was pretty apparent in the trailers for the movie. The main character has gone up to heaven, and in order to "move on", you must choose only one memory to remember for the rest of your life. Needless to say Kiara Diane (the main character) can't pick which memory she wants to take with her. The movie doesn't focus much on plot (as the less-than-two-hours runtime wouldn't allow it), but you do get in a pretty "believable" plot that throws in some good romance. There's only about twenty minutes of plot itself in this movie, but what's there has a believable storyline. (A bit cheesy but believable) The ending (which I won't spoil) frustrated me since I had those types of endings, but it was still a good way to end the movie. The moral of the story as printed on the box is: "Oftentimes, we fail to recognize the power of a smile, a kind word, a touch, a kiss, or an act of caring when they all have the potential to make a difference in someone's life."

One thing I fell in love with was the real actors. The men were probably a bit too "endowed" to be the average guy, but the females looked like your average woman. They had natural breasts, and the women also had natural looking bodies as well. It was actually really refreshing to see. (Most were also devoid of tattoos which was nice.) Everyone is also wearing realistic clothing (nice sundresses and such) instead of the "there's no way she'd wear that out of the house" type of clothing you sometimes see in porn.

I did have a slight issue with some of the acting. The plot was written very believably, but the acting could get obviously fake and jilted at times. It was like the conversations weren't flowing correctly. Again, since it's a porn, it makes sense, but if they're going for "romance", it helps if the two actors actually seem like they're in love which is something that only good acting would be able to provide. It isn't horribly distracting, but the bad acting is sometimes there.

The sex is actually really good though. What the actors lacked with the acting, they make up in the sex scenes. The sex is all sensual and loving. (The sex scenes are pretty much "flashbacks" to sexy memories, so they're all supposed to be romantic) They aren't formulaic like some porns can get, but they do basically stick to "vanilla" activities like oral and vaginal sex. There are cum shots on the females, and while there seems to be more equalized attention to female oral sex versus male oral sex, we still don't seem to have any female orgasms in the sex scenes. However, the couples do have great chemistry, and they end up having pretty good sex scenes. The scenes run a bit long (at about 20 minutes-ish each), but that can be a good thing too.

Since all of the scenes are pretty much the same activities in different orders, I'm not going to give blow-by-blows. (Har, har) Here are the action line-ups: 1st: Brooke Lee Adams and Danny Mountain; 2nd: Allie Haze and Xander Corvus; 3rd: Victoria White and Rocco Reed; 4th: Kiara Diane and Chris Johnson. As an odd sidenote, the credits mention "Erik Everhard" (okay, so I might have remembered this solely for the fact that I giggled at his name), but he doesn't appear in the movie. Maybe he's a penis-double?

The boyfriend insists that I mention his part of the movie. We're not sure if this is because he watched this near our bedtime or what, but he found the movie pretty boring for him. He said there wasn't enough action (as-in, the story didn't move on fast enough) as well as the sex scenes were just too sensual for most masturbation purposes. He did agree, though, that this would be a perfect choice if your wife/partner was reluctant to watch pornography. It's not too hardcore while throwing in real relationships and romance.

Scene selection does not allow you just to choose by sex scenes. There are 12 different chapters that you can choose by. The special features are pretty basic. They include a photo gallery of the actors and actresses in a slideshow format, trailers for other New Sensations movies, the web trailer of this movie, information about the company, a Behind the Scenes segment, and the "Pick Your Pleasure" feature. This is a feature that lists "Tease", "Blowjob", "Missionary", Doggystyle", "Cowgirl", and "Popshot". It's basically a compilation, depending on which one you choose, of all of those types of actions in the movie in one back-to-back playback. (For example, if you like the idea of watching the female's butt during doggystyle, you can choose the "Doggystyle" option to see all DoggyStyle segments during the movie.)

Overall, this is a good choice if you like romance in your porn. It's a bit slow-moving you like the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am approach, but it does a great job of *actually* being a good choice for a couple to watch. The actors look real, the acting is slightly unbelievable, and it delivers a good plot along with the porn.

Out of most of the porn, mainstream DVDs that I've reviewed, Almost Heaven is still one of the best ones in my mind. I still haven't rewatched it as I didn't really have much of an attachment to it the first time, but it's probably one of the best ones in my mind of the mainstream pornography films I've watched.