The $cheme(2003)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

Ray (Jimmy Fallon) begins to jeopardize his, August’s (Brian Hooks), and Martin’s (Nathan Anderson) scheme to capture Alison (Andie Tecec) having sex on videotape when he finds himself falling for Alison and starts to have second thoughts about what he and his friends are trying to do to her. One day, he gets her into a room at the Chilton Hotel that has been paid for by Felix (Bruce Weitz) (the tabloid reporter that Ray and his friends are getting the tape for and who has been providing all the funds for Ray to spend on Alison), and a video camera has been secretly set up outside on the balcony that is set up to turn on and record when the room’s light gets switched on. However, Ray keeps Alison from turning on the light, and Alison soon finds a goat’s skull on top of the bedside table as well as a Bible with rubber vomit on top of it in the drawer. Though initially confused by the presence of these items since they are considered Satanic, she soon decides to place the items on top of the table in a certain position for a good laugh. She then switches on the room’s light so she can see better and forces Ray onto the bed so they can get frisky, but all they do is kiss and get partially undressed before Ray’s conscience gets the better of him and he turns the light back off.

When Martin, August, and Felix stop by the hotel room later on, they find Ray all by himself, and when they watch the video recording on a VCR in the room, they see that, although the camera did get a clear shot of Alison’s face, the action that was recorded before Ray turned off the camera is not good enough to make it worthy of a scandal. To cover for the camera cutting out, Ray claims that he forgot that the light switch was linked up to it. Felix gets very angry about this and moves toward Ray intending to do him some harm, but Martin gets in between them and asks Felix to wait outside the room while he and August have a chat with Ray. Sometime later, Martin comes out of the room and informs Felix that they got Ray to admit to them that he shut off the camera because, just as he was about to penetrate Alison, his penis (legitimately) went flaccid. Unamused, Felix orders Martin to have a proper sex tape shot and on his desk by 11:00 p.m. tomorrow night or else there will be big trouble for him and his friends (Felix was told by his editor that he would be fired if he didn’t have anything ready for the tabloid’s next issue by then). Meanwhile, Alison tells her friend, Laura (Kamala Lopez-Dawson), about Ray’s performance problem, and Laura tells her that he went limp out of guilt because he is lying to her about something and she had better find out what it is. She then remarks to Alison that, with her and Ray having almost done the deed, at least this means that she now has the $2000 she wanted (she wanted to get that amount of money out of Ray to put towards a trip she is taking to Europe, since he deceived her into thinking that he is a wealthy man), but Alison informs her that she doesn’t have it yet and that what happened with Ray was just something that occurred “in the heat of the moment.” Laura warns her that she had better not fall for him because he must be lying to her, but Alison assures her that she has everything under control.

The next day, while Ray is out and about with Alison, August and Martin get a special “love potion” from an herbalist in Chinatown that will ensure that Ray remains amorous and erect from start to finish when he meets Alison for their dinner date tonight. When they show Ray the potion when he returns to the room at the Chilton, Ray refuses to drink it, and he tells them that he feels that this whole plan is getting way out of control. Martin complains to him that he is threatening their chance to make a fortune, and August points out that, so far, all of their efforts to catch Alison in the act have done nothing but drive Felix nuts and put this whole operation way over budget. Martin tells Ray to drink the potion, but Ray again refuses to do that and tells them both that he WILL come through for them. That night, after Ray has left to meet Alison for dinner in the Chilton’s restaurant, Felix pays Martin and August another visit in the hotel room, and they give their assurance that Ray will be reliable tonight. He takes his leave, but not before warning them again that there will be serious consequences if they and Ray fail to deliver the goods.

While having dinner with Alison, Ray is about to come clean with her about the whole scheme when August and Martin show up at their table dressed as waiters, having come up with a plan to get Ray to drink the potion without him knowing it. Martin empties Ray’s glass of water, and when August takes the glass into the kitchen and refills it, he puts the potion into the water, then gives the glass back to Ray before he and Martin leave. When Ray tries to resume his confession to Alison as well as tell her that he loves her, all he does is stammer and babble until his throat suddenly dries up, so Alison has him take a drink of his water. A second later, he finds himself starting to feel dizzy and excuses himself to use the restroom, and while he urinates, we see that the potion is taking hold of him. Shortly after he exits, he randomly kisses a brunette waitress out of Alison’s view, and we discover that the potion can be transferred through the saliva when the brunette suddenly gets as libidinous as he is and starts to wildly make out with him. August and Martin then appear and pry them apart, but the waitress kisses August just as he locks her in a broom closet, causing the potion to take hold of him as well and spur him to have sex with the waitress while Martin orders the reluctant Ray to head back to Alison. Shortly after he returns to her, he kisses her, and she quickly becomes just as sexually aroused as the others and starts to make out with Ray in front of everyone until Martin intervenes and tells Ray to take Alison up to the room. After they go, Martin goes back to the broom closet to collect August so they can do their part of the job, but after he separates August from the brunette, she kisses him as well, and then August kisses a blonde waitress after he steps outside, so they all start going to town on each other.

After Ray and Alison enter their room, Ray manages to turn the light on and activate the video camera while he is making out with Alison, and then they both start to have sex on the bed. August and Martin – having managed to come to their senses enough to ditch the waitresses – then sneak into the room and set up a small studio light so the camera will have a well-lit shot of the action, plus they place the goat’s skull, Bible, and plastic vomit back on top of the nightstand. However, the waitresses sneak into the room shortly afterwards, having followed August and Martin up there, and they get the duo into the bathroom and have a full uninterrupted sex session with them. Unfortunately, all the sexual activity causes the three friends to forget about the time, so they fail to deliver the sex tape to Felix before 11:00. After the now-unemployed Felix goes berserk and trashes his office, he pulls out a set of brass knuckles from one of his desk’s drawers and departs.

When August and Martin later come out of the bathroom, they find Ray sleeping alone. Martin then checks the time and discovers that nearly two hours have passed since the deadline, so he frantically wakes Ray up and yells for August to get the tape out of the camera. However, August discovers that the tape is gone and that a note addressed to Ray has been left in its place. Martin reads it to find that it is from Alison, and she reveals that she knew that there was a hidden video camera in the room when she writes to Ray that, while she found it very kinky that he recorded their sexual episode on video, she just couldn’t let him have the tape. She also adds that, if she sees him again, he must explain what the others were doing in the room with them. She then informs him that she is now off to France, and after apparently dropping a few hints suggesting that she wants him to follow her there, she signs off with “Love, Alison.” Just moments after August asks the others what they are going to tell Felix, Felix storms into the room, and after he realizes that the trio don’t have the tape, he puts on the brass knuckles and beats the crap out of all of them.

A day or two later, Alison is seen calling Laura from a payphone at the airport, having gotten the last of the cash that she needed for her trip. She tells Laura that she almost wasn’t going to leave Ray until she found the video camera, and when Laura asks her how she knew that it was there, she replies that she had a feeling that he would have one there because she had dated guys in the past who tried to do the same thing. However, she admits that she really does like Ray and intends to see him again, believing that he isn’t going anywhere. Ray and his friends are then shown laying in the hospital giving blood for money, and while August checks the job ads in a newspaper, Ray looks through a world atlas to find France, all the while ignoring Martin’s pleas for him to not give Alison another thought. Once Ray finds out where France is located, he rips the needle out of his arm and runs off, and the movie ends with him taking a kayak out to sea, having opted to paddle all the way to France.