Rent Showgirls (1995)

A Poor, Exploitative Drama - Showgirls review by GI

A film very rooted in it's time, the mid 90s, so much so in fact that it hasn't aged well and can't remotely survive a re-evaluation nor be valued as a film that's 'so bad its good'. It's just a failure on so many levels. Firstly the themes that director Paul Verhoeven attempts around the exploitation of women in the world of Las Vegas entertainment, the links with prostitution and the accepted rape by celebrities is given the veneer of sordid soft pornography as he obviously relishes getting as much naked flesh on screen as he possibly can. All the characters are simply unspeakably horrid and especially the main character of Nomi played by Elizabeth Berkley, whose career this film no doubt ruined. Nomi is a former prostitute (although her past is held back as some sort of justified reveal near at the film's concluding scenes) who arrives in Las Vegas hoping to achieve fame as a showgirl dancer. She's clearly talented but is forced into lap dancing to earn a living eventually realising that the only way to the top is by being a nasty bitch. Berkley's performance is all anger and exaggerated movement making Nomi an unrealistic and petulant figure. The worst part is the viewer has no sympathy for her as she sulks, fights and manipulates her way to the starring role in the show. The rape sequence that is meant to be some peak of the journey loses any of it's intended impact because by the time it arrives you are in the position where you couldn't care what happens to anyone even though the the rape victim is the one character with any sort of morality. The vengeful woman sequence that immediately follows is almost laughable and certainly anti climatic. When you consider Verhoeven's major films, both his European and American, and those of writer Joe Eszterhas who penned this, you wonder what went so wrong. It has to be that the entire concept is ill thought out to the extent that Verhoeven's usual and successful excesses in violence have no part when it comes to female exploitation and misogyny in the American system where he relies on titillation as a means to push boundaries. This remains a poor film and whilst it will have its fans it cannot be remotely admired.

NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOWBUSINESS - Showgirls review by Frank Talker™

Director Paul VERHOEVEN does not have enough genuine feeling for women to make this odd movie work at all well much beyond its glossy sexual-exploitation.

"Showgirls" is a clear example of a movie that most definitely should have been made by a woman since that would almost certainly have meant less exploitation of the sexually-exploitive nature of Las Vegas and more focus on exploring the reasons for said exploitation; eg, Las Vegas as a metaphor for the generally-exploitive nature of White culture, a metaphor for Caucasian gynophobia and misogyny, etc.

Elizabeth BERKLEY is a fine actress with a fierce abrasive energy, but she and everyone else is somewhat lost-at-sea in an un-empathetic script, which hurt her career, from the usually-mediocre Joe ESZTERHAS: It is riddled with melodramatic clichés and a dislike for women which taints the entire enterprise. It's hard to think of anyone else with the requisite acting and dancing skills and whom also looks good naked, whom would also have had the ability, the sheer guts &, perhaps, the desperation to even attempt this. And she gives of it her best.

The films lack of eroticism is precisely the point being made about sexual exploitation - it's only erotic for the sexually-jaded. And it is to be lauded for that despite the director repeating the point with so much nudity that the movie starts crossing-the-line between exploring exploitation and being just another part of it. One needs a tightrope-walkers skill to tread such a fine line successfully and VERHOEVEN has partly failed here.

Although intended as a satire on the American-dream social propaganda, the writer has no talent for comedy and the director somehow lost his after the better satires he directed such as RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997). The deliberate campness does not add anything amusing nor entertaining as it did with such movies as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and the clever idea of having Elizabeth BERKLEY over-act someone pulling out all the stops for fame at which the actress, herself, was trying to shoot, is drowned-out by the weakness of the satire on a White entertainment-world populated by so many ghouls and parasites. Unfortunately, this leaves BERKLEY looking exactly like the character she is playing.

Because this movie, ultimately, is as shallow and as superficial as the seamy side of the show-business being exposed, it would've been much better constructed as an old-fashioned MGM Hollywood musical - melodramatic, unsubtle & with better music; eg, Singin' in the Rain (1952). Then it could have been on much firmer ground as a social satire on Western patriarchy and the falsity of the American Dream that it clearly wanted to be.