Titties Galore!

So: here we have perhaps the most notorious case of the first big budget, adults only feature to hit cinemas of all time: Paul Verohoven's mastur-er-MASTERPIECE, Showgirls. For those of you who want to know the story, here it is: woman with a sordid past arrives in Vegas to 'make it', only to lose herself (wait, she had an identity) in a world of sleazy strip clubs, sex, drugs, glitz, glamour and VER-SAYCE!

I'm sorry, was this movie intended to be an erotic thriller/drama, because I completely didn't read it that way. What I saw was a blustery vulgar comedy of errors that just happened to have a lot of nudity, seizure-sex and colourful terms for genitalia. I'm not joking! I thought this was meant to be a screwball comedy. It has all of the typical stylings of one:
-One dimensional characters ie. the 'Good Girl', the 'Bad Girl', the Good Girl's Best Friend, the Douchebag, the Mother/Father figure of the Good Girl, etc...
-Laugh-inducing plot turns and 'twists'
-Potentially offensive racial stereotypes
-Despite all of the tribulations (and her best friend getting raped) the Good Girl has gone through, she makes it out in once piece and lives happily ever after.

                                                   Looka me, Mommy, I'm a STAR!

So imagine my surprise when I read Verhoven intended Showgirls to be a serious film that he wanted to titillate the audience.Verhoven, who has also been responsible for Robocop, Total Recall and The Black Book wanted to make a movie that would be talked about for years to follow- well, we can't argue with that, but it hasn't been spoken about in the way Verhoven was hoping. For example, how can one take a movie seriously when you have dialogue such as this running all the way through it?

http://www.joblo.com/video/player.php?video=SHOWGIRLS-Best-Lines

If this stuff wasn't an exercise in hilarity, it would be offensive. I mean, how many people do you know talk like this?

Next, this movie tries so hard to be sexy that it fails miserably:

http://www.joblo.com/video/player.php?video=SHOWGIRLS-Dance

I swear, that dance that Elizabeth Berkley does with that African American dude in the club looks more like an interpretive dance than ACTUAL dance.

http://www.joblo.com/video/player.php?video=SHOWGIRLS-Pool-Sex

Note, ladies and gentlemen: if your partner starts to act like this while doing the wild thing, chances are they are suffering a dreadful seizure and are in danger of swallowing their tongue, so rush them to the ER pronto!

I believe the only actor who truly knows what sort of movie they are in is the lovely Gina Gershon- she is constantly chucking knowing winks to the audience. Later on, she said that sleazy men have came up to her, eyed her up and said "You know, you were in Showgirls", to which she said "Yep. And I got to kiss beautiful women. What's your point?".

    You go, Gina

Ah, but just when we are all rolling on the floor holding our tummies with laughter, Verhoven seems to say "Hey, hey! This is a SERIOUS movie! Here, watch this lovely girl get gang raped by some douchey rock star and his roadies! Yeahhhh, not laughing now, are you?"
Oh Paul, you are such a spoil sport. :-(

That last tidbit non-withstanding, this is an outrageously stupid, dumb-arse film that does everything wrong, but it ends up being so damn right. It really is a shame that Verhoven wanted this baby to be a serious and sexy morality tale because if he was filming it for the reason why we love it so much, he might have made a sequel.

Credit to JoBlo.com for the fantastic vids.