Film parody, especially modern film parody, can be a torturous experience, a tin-eared mixture of belabored irony and increasingly outdated references. Sexina is not a painful experience, far from the worst the genre has to offer (even landing ever-so-slightly above the median), but it's a directionless movie, a collection of middling jokes collected in a kitchen sink. Writer / director Erik Sharkey takes a bunch of ideas and refuses to make an overt effort to glue them all together, half-heartedly aiming at his handful of satirical targets with a looseness that practically disqualifies the movie from even being a spoof. There's a reason Airplane! stole its plot from Zero Hour and Airport: it gave the film a structure on which to hang the jokes.

The area where Sharkey's parody skills come closest to succeeding -- relatively speaking -- is his skewering of the music industry. In one particularly devilish turn of events, Glitz Records manipulates Lance into completing tasks that seal his own fate as yesterday's news. The kidnapped scientist is tasked with genetically engineering the next boy band sensation, and their unveiling on a "TRL"-style program is kind of amusing (more of a smile than a laugh). However, this only illustrates one of the many ways Sexina is out of touch, coming off less like a jab at, say, One Direction and more like a script that was written in 2001 and languished long past its expiration date. The film's fake pop music is also pretty poor, although a song about two girls shopping laid over a shopping montage is conceptually amusing.

Comparatively, the action and spy material is hardly even present, mostly amounting to the ridiculous, attention-grabbing leather outfit that Sexina puts on when she decides she's in "investigation" mode. Investigation mode mostly consists of her meeting up with other people and asking them what they've heard rather than doing any research herself, and yet everything conveniently comes together in the end, simply because she selects Vera's essay as the winner of the contest. Vera's story takes up about half of the movie, which is mostly awkward because Vera has no connection to Sexina (other than being a fan), and so for quite a bit of time the viewer is left watching two concurrent storylines, one of which has nothing to do with the title character they probably hoped to see. It's standard teen stuff, with Vera being picked on for being fat and having a crush on a football player (Ronald J. Zambor). The humor in Vera's story is at odds with itself, promoting body acceptance through catty insults and physical violence (not to mention the film's streak of mild homophobia, with Sexina's infatuated assistant and a creepy gym teacher played for laughs over and over).

As a director, Sharkey doesn't do much to try and cover up the movie's minimal budget, staging scenes in a way that almost emphasizes the fact that Vera's school only appears to have ten students, or the complete emptiness of a supposedly bustling TV studio filled with a live audience. At one point, the film sort of tries to make a joke out of it with a "bear attack", but the results are more embarrassing and weird than funny. Sharkey gets perfectly adequate performances from everyone, including the teen cast members, as well as Adam West in a role that seems to be mostly shot with a hand double or on a green screen, focused on the armrest and back of a chair, Dr. Claw-style. ("Orange is the New Black" fans should also be aware that Annie Golden's part in the movie only amounts to about a minute of screen time.) None of these things really hurt the film, but they do add gaps to the structural integrity of the movie, resulting in something that feels more like a pile of characters and ideas than a cohesive film. Genial but formless, Sexina is a punchline in search of a set-up.

The DVD
Made in 2007 and not released on DVD until now, Wild Eye has made the totally inexplicable decision to drop "Pop Star P.I." from the title and have simply gone with Sexina. The DVD artwork features Sexina in her full leather get-up over a generic city backdrop, with Adam West and a sword-bearing ninja tossed in for good measure. The art plays up West, Davy Jones, and Annie Golden's involvement to try and lure people in, with the colors of the entire thing de-saturated in keeping with modern superhero movies. The one-disc release comes in a budget Amaray and there is no insert.

The Video and Audio
Presented in something marginally less than anamorphic 1.78:1 (the image is very slightly windowboxed), this is a very pleasing image that brings out the film-like qualities of the image. I have no idea why a film like Sexina would've been produced on actual film stock instead of digital, but this DVD looks really good as a result. The softness of the original image makes the film a good fit with DVD; the film-like qualities of the image cover up any limitations in the sharpness of standard definition. The only minor quibble is black crush, which may or may not be inherent to the original photography. Sound is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track featuring some very basic surround effects, which sound just fine but also feel a bit cursory. Disappointingly, no subtitles or captions are included.

The Extras
A couple of featurette-like bits are included. "Davy Jones Sings 'Sexina'" (4:35) is a brief interview with the Monkees singer recording the theme song and reflecting on some moments in his career. "Behind-the-Scenes" (4:32) is next, a reel of B-roll, including some bits of West recording his lines in a studio (just as I suspected).

The rest of the disc is snippets from the film. "Bloopers and Outtakes" (3:22) is a pretty forgettable selection of flubs and mistakes. It's followed by a single deleted scene (1:48). Lastly, "Chris Carter Plays the Blues" (7:23) is an unedited sequence of a guitarist seen briefly in a bar (not the creator of "The X-Files, by the way) playing some pleasing blues guitar.

On the main menu, "Trailers" leads to spots for Showgirls 2: Penny's From Heaven, TIGHT, Deadly X-Mas, and The Disco Exorcist. A trailer for Sexina is also included.

Conclusion
Sexina's not a struggle to sit through but it doesn't add up to anything, literalizing "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks." The "__________ Movie" movies are undoubtedly worse, but even with their attentions going toward whatever's coming to theaters, they manage a consistency that Sexina is missing. Skip it.