Showgirls

Rating:
Summary: A fun film with a lot of drama
Review: The film that shocked almost everyone is quite fun...if you don't take it too seriously. Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) appears out of nowhere and hitches a ride with a smooth talking guy who steals her suitcase. Nomi meets Molly (Gina Rivera), a seamstress who fixes costumes at the Stardust and they hit it off. Since Nomi wants to be a dancer, the best job she could find was as a stripper/lap dancer at a seedy club. When Nomi meets Cristal (Gina Gershon) , the lead in the Stardust show "Goddess" things start to heat up. Nomi wants what Cristal has including her boyfriend Zack (Kyle MacLachlan). As a war begins between the two, Nomi shoves Cristal down a flight of stairs, lands Zack and becomes the star of the show. Nomi realizes that she must pay the high price for fame and can't handle it. When Nomi's past is uncovered and Molly is brutally raped, Nomi must revenge everything and sacrifice everything.

Rating:
Summary: If you have to ask you'll never know
Review: Ok - let's get the obvious bits out of the way. This movie aspires to be the stripper version of All About Eve but without any of the talent or great dialogue that that movie had. This movie is full of cliches, bad dialogue, horrible acting (but Gina Gershon and Kyle MacLachlin are trying real hard to keep straight faces when they say Esterhaz's lines - you gotta give them credit for effort) and a dumb storyline. The nudity is so pervasive that you're begging the actors to put on clothing. This movie is instrumental in teaching frat boys the values of modesty.

I've watched it a dozen times and I've loved it every time.

I blame Verhoeven. There are hundreds of movies churned out every year with gratuitous nudity, bad dialogue and dumb storylines. If you have Showtime you've seen most of them. But only Verhoeven would have the kind of enthusiasm that would turn it into something brilliant. The cat fights between Gershon and Berkely are so over teh top that you wonder if they are really gay men in disguise. The Elvis impersonator stealing Berkley's luggage is classic. The orgasm/epileptic fit in the pool still gives me nightmares. In order to prepare to beat up a rapist rock star, Elizabeth Berkley PAINTS HER NAILS!!! How twisted is that?

And only Verhoeven would direct an obscene line of dialogue with the actor walking, standing under a lone light, turning with a choked up voice and a tear in his eye. You think it's going to be sentimental and it's just ewwwwww. And you love Verhoeven for it.

Unless you actually watch movies purely for quality and aesthetics, you'll love this movie. It goes so far into bad that it comes out beautiful. On the other hand if you are a frat boy looking to watch a movie with a lot of nudity - watch something else. This movie is gay camp at its best.

Rating:
Summary: #1 Camp Classic of The Nineties
Review: There was movement in NYC in the late 1990's to turn this into a midnight flick ala' ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. There were regular showings at a multiplex in the East Village...and the audience even had cues to yell out at certain points during the movie. However, this never really caught on because the bridge and tunnel crowd did not quite meld well with the NYC midnight crowd. Half the crowd came to see the movie and the other half merely wanted to have fun with it.
Watching SHOWGIRLS as an exercise in campy fun is a real blast. I don't think Elizabeth Berkely is at all to blame, as she plays the character for all it is worth. The script is clearly the culprit in this expensive debacle of unbelievably tackyness.
Watching SHOWGIRLS is really like watching a bunch of drunk drag queens turn hateful one evening at a local gay bar. But in SHOWGIRLS the drag queens are all women. If SHOWGIRLS had been made in the 50's, Gena Gershon's role would have been played by Joan Crawford.

The dialogue, production numbers, and everything about SHOWGIRLS is still so tacky, you just can't believe that it was ever made for a mainstream audience. I mean it almost like BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS with an 80 million dollar budget.
If you like camp, you will like showgirls.

Rating:
Summary: ShowGirls: 0 Stars; Amazon Reviewers of this film: 5 stars
Review: Yes...this film is everything that my fellow reviewers have stated: Trashy Classic Kitsch that has been recently inducted into the Hall of Camp.
Have no fear about Elizabeth Berkeley's all-but-dead acting career. Like actress Mamie Van Doren, Ms. Berkeley will make guest appearances and sign autographs at conventions for years to come, which should prove quite profitable. If she auctions off Nomi's short little dresses (including the Ver-SAYCE) and those miniscule G-Strings on eBay, that will set her up for life.
Make sure you watch the short "Making of Showgirls" featurette included with the DVD. Everybody interviewed was straight-faced and dead serious, which makes me believe these people are not Summa Cum Laude scholars of Camp, but totally clueless. But I should cut them some slack: Months of hearing and uttering Eszterhas' inane dialogue is bound to creep into the subconscious, resulting in interviews that sound right out of the Show Girls script. Such is the impact of bad writing.

There's only one thing that is absolutely brilliant about this film: the hysterically funny reviews by fellow reviewers here at Amazon.com. One reviewer even likens the film to the classic "All About Eve" which was so ludicrious, it was FUNNY. Did I say this film impacts everybody?? Ah...perhaps that is the brilliance behind Show Girls...it is trash, but MEMORABLE trash, forever burned in your brain cells or burning your brain cells...take your pick.

Buy this must-have DVD without shame or embarrassment on Amazon.com today--you won't be sorry.

A FINAL KUDOS to all Amazon.com reviewers of Show Girls! Most of you people should have been hired to write the script for Show Girls instead of Joe Eszterhas. I can't believe he's writing scripts for TONS of money while all of us sit here writing reviews for free....sighh...I guess it's true that God protects little children and bad script writers.

Rating:
Summary: the one and only.
Review: Paul Verhoeven's 4th US made film is some wath a let down after his BASIC INSTINCT (1992), but is some wath good of a film at the same time. A disaster at the box office, it became a cult hit, especially at college campuses and teen party nights. The story (yes there is a story) is a cross between BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and ALL ABOUT EVE. Good camp, but does something seems all too wrong with the acting.

1995. MGM. 131 MINS.

Note: do not get R-rated verison.

Rating:
Summary: See it for yourself
Review: Critics turned their nose up at this, but they were so wrong. 'Showgirls' is perversely awesome in its own special way. ...This is special--prepare to be assualted by gargantuan attitudes, hardcore pottymouth, episodic violence, vain melodrama, howling comic touches and relentless nudity. What in the hell do you expect from Paul Verhoeven? This is no-holds-barred entertainment with a capital E. The casting is excellent, and I love the caricatures. Gina Gershon is a vicious pussycat, simmering with petty evil. Elizabeth Berkley is thoroughly provocative, an excellent dancer, and a very brave woman. She's got heat! Kyle MacLachlan is interesting, playing the alpha-male entertainment director with an MBA. A suspenseful, vulgar tale, and funny as hell from the get-go. I'll never forget the pool sex. Excellent costumes. Tons of hard work went into the dance productions, and of course, dancers have the best bodies on the planet. There's a lot of goodness in here, just not the wholesome kind. Prepare a monster bowl of popcorn and enjoy yourself.

Rating:
Summary: The acting bad, the plot ridiculous!
Review: But it's still one of the only movies I'm able to watch again and again. It's worth it alone for the shows, the dancing, creative nudity, and most of all the silly characters. Every single one of them acted in ways that are completely unbelievable. This is a cult film, to be enjoyed for lovers of movies like Heathers, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Lawnmower Man. This movie is not to be taken seriously.

Rating:
Summary: Thank God for amazon.com...
Review: ...because I could never muster up enough nerve to buy this movie from a retail store.

Rating:
Summary: I'm so confused...
Review: 1 star or 5 stars, 1 star or 5 stars... I settled on 3 because I just can't tell if this film is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen, or one of the cleverest satires of recent years. Elizabeth Berkley is either an egregious overactress who deserves to have an anti-career, or a brazenly self-aware scholar of camp who deserves our respect. As Nomi, she veers from girlish friskiness to happy hysteria to mad hysteria to sad hysteria to frenzied stupidity. An early scene where she shows off her dancing "talent" at a disco left me truly not knowing what to think. Surely, I pondered, this must be a joke. No one would dance so spastically, so archly, so much like a wild, pouty, untamed lionness. At least not anyone who expected to be taken seriously as a dancer. And no real-life observer could possibly be expected to respond, "WOW! She can really dance!" and not expect to be sprayed with beer shooting from the noses of the laughing bystanders. OK, so Nomi is innocent? or is it just superdim? She doesn't know her social security number or next of kin - or is this mental lapse meant to be interpreted as some sort of breaking-with-the-past maneuver? ...

Gina Gershon is foxy, has lots of teeth, and has the attitude of someone who is pretty pleased with herself for snagging such an easy paycheck... If you like Gina, see her in the creepy and kinky "Bound" instead.

Rating:
Summary: THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!
Review: IS THIS MOVIE AWARD WORTHY? NO. IS THIS MOVIE ENTERTAINING? YES. IS ELIZABETH BERKLEY A GOOD ACTRESS? GOOD ENOUGH. FROM THE DIRECTOR OF "BASIC INSTINCT" AND "HOLLOW MAN". "SHOWGIRLS" WAS MADE TO ENTERTAIN, AND IT DOES JUST THAT. ANYTHING ELSE IS IRRELEVANT.