Bruno Mars' "Gorilla" is an absolutely arena-sized sex jam, and now, it's got an appropriately epic music video.
In the new clip (which premiered Tuesday on Mars' Facebook page), Bruno pushes practically everything to the max, casting actress Freida Pinto as Isabella, a downright devilish dancer in a South of the Border strip club. She struts and prowls her way across the stage, powers her way up and down the pole, and — in one gloriously cinematic scene — sheds her close with such ferocity that it literally causes the joint to short circuit.
Luis Guzman cameos as the club's seriously sleazy owner, and Mars and his mates serve as the house band, and practically every frame of the video drips with both sweat and sex (to say nothing of the scenes where Mars and Pinto passionately paw at one another in the back seat of a Caprice) ... which, again, is probably the point. But credit Mars — who co-directed the video with frequent collaborator Cameron Duddy — for also infusing the clip with a healthy dose of camp, whether it's in the catty back-and-forth between a pair of strippers backstage, or Guzman's scenery-chewing turn. Clearly, Bruno's seen "Showgirls" a few times.
And while Pinto will no doubt garner the most attention for her, uh, work— make no mistake about it, she deserves the accolades — the "Gorilla" video also succeeds because Mars and Duddy have created a singular, hyper-sexualized world here, one that pays homage to the song's subject matter (you know, humping) while, at the same time also paying tribute to pulpy classics of the past. It feels fresh, yet, also worn in ... or, more specifically, sweated in.
Like everything Mars has done on his Unorthodox Jukebox"Locked Out of Heaven" and "Treasure," specifically) his latest clip is undoubtedly indebted to the past few decades of pop-cultural history ... yet, once again, he's managed to created something entirely new, too. Thanks to Pinto's wattage, "Gorilla" goes to heights — and depths — Mars has never visited before ... we're all riding along with him, and we can't wait to go back, even if we probably need to take a cold shower before repeated viewings.
