Cinematic Disasters - Showgirls

 

Alright a brand new Cinematic Disasters! Let's do this!

Showgirls is an "erotic" (and you'll find soon enough why I used quotation marks) drama movie that's produced by Carolco Pictures, Chargeurs, and United Artists with distribution by MGM/UA Distribution Co. Showgirls was written by Joe Eszterhas, with Paul Verhoeven directing.

The story is, a female drifter is heading to Las Vegas to go after her dreams of being a professional dancer and showgirl. But as success comes her way, she sees the darker side of her dreams.

My Thoughts

Let's start off with our main character, Nomi.

1) What kind of a name is that? Sure it's not her real name, but as far as fake names go, that's probably top ten worst.

2) What is this character? Throughout the movie people just like Nomi. In various degrees too. They either want to befriend her, promote her, f*ck her, or some sort of combination. Which I don't get because she's a horrible person. She's got some serious anger issues, inconsiderate of others, or she does horrible things like deliberately injury people to get ahead. And when she's not those things, she's just an idiot.

Now let's talk about the actress behind the Nomi character, Elizabeth Berkley. Her performance is amazingly over the top. I mean it, it's hilarious. But funny enough, she's not to blame for her acting. Paul Verhoeven took full blame. He said and I quote, "I asked Elizabeth to do all that -- to be abrupt and to act in that way, but people have been attacking her about that ever since. If somebody has to be blamed, it should be me". Gotta give him credit, not many directors own up to their mistakes. So yeah folks, go blame Paul.

Now to get into the plot. After wowing the audience, Nomi is offered a job at 'Goddess'. Which is funny, because Nomi can't dance! I mean, just look at this gif.

Although to be fair it's not just Nomi, nobody in this movie can dance! You would think that when you're making a movie that involves a lot of dancing you would make sure the dancing is perfect. I should be making fun of the choreographer, but come on, his or her name is attached to Showgirls. I think that's enough punishment.

Oh and somewhere during this movie Nomi is now addicted to drugs. I bring it up because through a good portion of the runtime, she goes on and on about how drugs are bad and how she doesn't do drugs, and all of the sudden she's into a drugs. It comes right of nowhere with absolutely no build up. It just happens.

Then afterwards we're introduced to James and James is...James is......I don't know who James is. He just comes into the picture, disappears for awhile, then he's back. Come to think of it, that's a running thing in this movie. Characters and subplots are introduced, on screen for a bit, and then they're gone. One of which involves monkeys. I'd go into more detail but I can't, the movie doesn't explain, so neither can I.

This line.

Well there you have it folks. Everybody got aids and shit. 😂

Now at the very beginning I made a smart remark about this being an "erotic" drama. The reason for the quotation marks is because this has got to be the least sexiest movie I've ever seen. To draw you a picture, imagine Elizabeth Berkley having sex, but instead of something sensual, it looks more like she's flopping around like a fish out of water, all the while the guy looks like he's rubbing his stomach against her cooch, as suppose to properly being inside her....if my description sounds even slightly funny to you, go watch the scenes themselves. Trust me, you and your girlfriend are gonna be more in a laughing mood then a horny one. What's even funnier than this is Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoever made Basic Instinct! A movie that was labeled "perhaps the quintessential erotic thriller of the 90s". So how in the blue hell did they make one of the best erotic movies, to what some might argue is one of the worst?

Let's move forward to the dialogue, it's weird. Women are either talking about sex, which I am not against a matter of fact, hell yeah! Then when it's not sex, they talk their nails, food, or make sexist jokes about women. Now despite what the woke police will tell you, that's not a bad thing. Hell, us guys make jokes about ourselves all the time. But with this movie the ladies are just brutal, and not in hilarious way, more like of "damn take it easy" way.

I don't recall when, but somewhere, we're introduced to Cristal and she's a big deal for some odd reason. No seriously, when she's in the starring role for Goddess, there is numerous reporters getting interviews with her. They even mentioned how she beat out major stars like Janet Jackson. I'm making a big deal out of this because there's no reason for the movie to make a big deal out of it. It's strippers putting on a show! Had this taken place in an age where stripping was starting out then I'd get it, but this is the mid-90's, I'm pretty sure these kinds of shows were a very common thing. Oh, and going back to Cristal's bizarre status, when she's injured, which is caused by Nomi pushing her down a flight of stairs. Once again, Nomi is terrible woman, her injury and being unable to perform is treated as a major conflict. The guys are absolutely shocked and terrified because now they have to use the understudy [Nomi]. This doesn't make sense because this is why you have an understudy. In case your star can't perform for one reason or the other. Does the movie want us to believe this kind of thing has never happened before?

Moving on, Nomi being the star wows the crowd despite terrible dancing. Soon, her and her friend Molly (a character Nomi befriended at the beginning) go to a party in celebration of the show being a success. Where Molly meets and is head over heels for her musician idol Andrew Carver. Afterwards Carver brings her to his room, where he proceeds to sexual assault her. Now I'm not gonna be up in arms about the sexual assault story. That kind of storytelling has been used multiple times and can be used effectively, what I will say is it doesn't make any sense. They had Molly so consumed with desire for Carver, that you would have thought she just do him anywhere if he asked.

Afterwards, Nomi is naturally pissed about what happened so she of course wants revenge. So she meets up with him back at his place, where she's now a taekwondo expert! No seriously, she just starts spin kicking him like it's going out of style. It's freakin' hilarious.

And so our movie ends with Nomi leaving Vegas and Molly, yeah Nomi doesn't even bother to stay with her during her recovery, she's a nice friend like that. And she also faces no consequences for injuring Cristal, The End.

While the assault scene will make you uneasy, everything else about Showgirls is amazing. If you're a fan of movies that are so bad they're good, Showgirls is an essential.

My final rating is, So Bad, It's Good.

That's going to do it for me. Come back on Thursday, Nov 14th, where I'll begin the Road to Karate Kid: Legends with my review of the original 1984 classic, The Karate Kid. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day and remember, everybody got aids and shit.