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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Cult Classic, 27 Dec 2007
Showgirls is an excellent cult film. Its filled with terrible dialogue delivered by actors in performances that they'd surely rather forget. Paul Verhoeven - usually a top notch director - fails spectacularly with his fourteenth film and the script by Joe "I Don't Know Anything About Women" Eszterhas is laughable.
It stars Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi Malone (She's alone in the world, get the joke?), an ambitious young woman who has dreams of becoming a famous dancer in Las Vegas. Berkley's performance is something else. She smiles, she pouts, she shouts, she screams, she gyrates, she vomits, and often all of the above in the same scene. She is joined by Gina Gershon and Kyle MacLachlan, both similarly hamming it up to the extreme as Berkley's fellow dancer and the "Entertainment Director" respectively. Glenn Plummer also waves goodbye to any credibility in his performance as Berkley's quasi-love interest.
From reading this review you may wonder why I have given it five stars. The reason is this: You will never be more entertained in your life. It is hilarious, outrageous, ridiculous, completely unrealistic, shallow, stupid and ultimately a misunderstood masterpiece of everyone involved in the production doing everything wrong in perfect synchronicity.
The complete ignorance of all involved is obvious if you take a look at the Special Features on the DVD. If you watch the short making-of programme, the film is described by Eszterhas as "an all out rock and roll musical" which is unbelievable. First of all, the choreography of the dance scenes at the 'Goddess' show is ridiculous, there is no rock music in the film (apart from the song played over the end credits) and there are no songs in the film at all - so how is it a musical, you may ask?
A great piece of trash, go on, come over to the dark side!
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17 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tittilating film that guarantees a laugh, 11 Jun 2000
By A Customer
I'm sorry, but I love this film. I think that after all the bad press, and people slating it for being too shallow, too stupid, too stereotypical....its time that someone stood up and said, fair enough, its shallow,stupid and stereotypical, but I LIKE IT! Ok, if you take it seriously you won't like it.However, if you're up for a laugh, some great dancing and a fantastic soundtrack (no really!) as well as some of the corniest lines ever imagined, well this film is for you. Its cheap, so buy it, sit down with a bunch of mates and prepare to bitch (her bum is really big, i wish i could eat burgers 24/7 etc) and laugh (pulling would be so much easier if I had a top that every time i did the chicken dance would parade my offerings..).If you hate it, well at least you've seen it and can agree next time someone says they think its trash, and if not, you can rewind, and start learning how to do that amazing thing with your left leg!
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Risible/entertaining, sordid/hilarious , a travesty/perverse triumph, 29 Jul 2006
I've seen a lot of funny films- "Airplane" , "Spinal Tap", "Kingpin" The Life Of Brian"- to name a handful . But I don't think I have ever seen a film which made me laugh (at various points) as much as Showgirls. Even the Showgirls web-site describes it as unhinged but that goes nowhere near far enough in encapsulating what a deranged hypnotic miasma of pestilent acting and writing Showgirls is. I ,d call it the worst film I've ever seen but It's ludicrously entertaining and I have seen "Alone In The Dark".
Directed by Paul Verhoeven who likes his movies firstly to be violent but failing that to have lots of exposed female flesh, which I don't have a problem with, where Showgirls falls down is firstly in the script which if you were completely ignorant of the films conception you would assume was written by some hormonal fifteen year old with buck teeth and a complexion like a jogger running behind a gritter.
But no the pen( is) behind this abomination is Joe Eszterhas, the man who wrote the nearly as silly "Basic Instinct". Eszterhas is one of those writers who projects his prejudices and fantasies into his work to such an extent that ultimately that is all they are. The wet dreams of a frustrated Hollywood hack that can't get laid unless money changes hands. Trust me this man has a lot of money, he got paid $3 million for this penile leakage.
"Showgirls" is unrepentantly dim-witted and hopelessly misguided. Nomi is portrayed as some mythical sex goddess but played by the vacuous Berkley she is outshone by virtually all the dancers surrounding her in the beauty stakes. Verhoeven is too dazzled by the glitz and glamour to think of imbibing the film with any of the ferocious intelligence he brought to "Robocop" and Eszterhas is plainly a virulent misogynist which is one thing but $3 million for a script where people say the most obvious things all the time ( a woman shows Nomi her massive engagement ring, her partner turns to Nomi and says "Were getting Married" ...Gee I thought it meant they'd joined just received their Tesco club card) and everyone acts like a selfish imbecile? They say writers should write about what they know and Eszterhas obviously has. "Showgirls" is unremitting tripe. Sleazy, asinine and morally bankrupt. It is also wildly entertaining and very very funny, but for all the wrong reasons.Very much like it,s author, i guess it,s another of those coincedences at work
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