Showgirls(1995) Film Review

General Rating: 1 Star out of 4, Thumbs Down

Entertainment Rating: 4 Stars out of 4, Thumbs Up.

Rated NC-17 For Nudity And Erotic Sexuality Throughout, And For Some Graphic Language And Sexual Violence (Also available in R-Rated version)

2hrs 11min/131min.

75 uses of the F-word.

James: "Man, everybody got AIDS and shit!"

Showgirls is a delightful little atom bomb of nudity. It's the kind of nudity that tries to be sexy but ultimately, turns out hilarious.  The film that destroyed the career of Elizabeth Berkley and the NC-17 rating in one fell swoop. Technically, the film is a complete disaster. However, the film is pure fun at every angle. This is the best bad movie there ever was.

 

Nomi Malone(Elizabeth Berkley) is a drifter. She hitches a ride with a man who is on his way to Las Vegas. They get to Las Vegas, but when she leaves the casino, she finds the man and her suitcase gone. She happens upon a new friend named Molly, who gets her a role in a showgirl play named Goddess. There, she meets the lead, Cristal(Gina Gershon), A cocaine addicted woman who really wants to screw with Nomi. One night, she takes her partner Zack(Kyle Maclachlan) to the club where Nomi dances at, and pays for a lap dance for Zack to demoralize Nomi, but she remains unfazed.

 

Soon Nomi, lands a role in the hit show Goddess at the Stardust casino. She performs so well, that instead of continuing a rivalry, Cristal wants to become friends with Nomi. Soon, Nomi also starts a relationship with Zack which really screws with Critsal's head. Will Nomi make it big in Hollywood? Will Cristal and Nomi's friendship suffice? Can anyone in this film not say Darlin' without a straight face? Will everyone truly get AIDS? Find out all of the answers in the compelling(read: predictable) Showgirls.

 

Where to start? The acting in this movie verges on not caring to REALLY not caring. Elizabeth Berkley is acting more seriously than she should. "It's not stripping", Nomi shouts when someone accuses her of being a person with low morale, "It's dancing." Gina Gershon is absolutely hilarious as Cristal Connors, a woman who tries to act sinfully lusty, but really just comes off as nothing but an open-mouthed goofball at times. I will say, she does look good in that little fedora hat She wears. Kyle Maclachlan is also quite the trip to watch as Zack. During the scene where Nomi is giving him a lap dance(you know, like all stripper movies, Striptease and Barb Wire), He's not watching her like a normal man should, he's watching her like he's watching a high profile art gallery.

 

Even the scenes where the movie tries to be sexy it fails. The big scene with Nomi and Zack in the pool, tries so hard to be sexy but ends with Nomi thrashing around in the pool like a fish. The brief scenes at Nomi's club that she works at, aren't even sexy. When she dances, she throws herself around and treats the pole like an abandoned animal. She thrashes on it and at 1 or 2 points, licks the pole. Do you know how unsanitary and just flat out gross that is? 

The dialouge is just flat out hilarious and it shouldn't be. Gina Gershon say "darlin'" so much that I'm surprised that she has a straight face every single time she says it.  The best line, quoted above at the very beginning of this review, is absolutely hilarious. There are lines, some too vulgar for me to put here, are brought up at pure random, and are never brought up again. This movie has some of the best written dialouge since Battlefield Earth.

 

Showgirls is not one of the best bad movies ever made, Showgirls IS the best bad movie ever made. Filled with hilarious acting, unsexy sexy scenes and some of the funniest dialouge in a non-comedy I have ever seen. I honestly think that Paul Verhooven, the director of Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers, took a look at this film and called it a work of art. I think back to the scene mentioned above, the way Kyle Maclachlan looks at and observes Nomi during her dance. That's how I imagine the director, Paul, is looking at this film; trying to make smut, look like art.