While the world of L.A. male escorts is bound to hold tons of promise for a documentary, it isn't on display here in 101 Rent Boys, a padded and fairly shallow look at 101 members of the gay skin trade. The documentary forgoes insight in favor of being "provocative," which mainly means lots of shots of the subjects' private parts, rarely with any real bearing on what's going on in the movie. (Do I really need to see a prostitute put a cigarette out on his ass?)

The few bits of emotion that made it into the movie don't make the endeavor worthwhile, and the self-indulgent filmmaking (which is long on showing the men grab the 50 dollar bill they were paid, putting on a shirt beating their number in the sequence, and other irrelevant material) will likely turn you off altogether.