'Showgirls' the notorious 1995, Las Vegas set "erotic drama", was the first major studio release with an NC-17 rating, severly damaged director Paul Verhovan's career and essentially ruined that of its star Elizabeth Berkley. The stylistic term "camp" is sometimes defined as an artistic work of "failed seriousness", this is the perfect descriptor for 'Showgirls', which seems to really aspire at being a serious work of character study and social criticism. However, there was some serious miscalculation and this piece of cinematic ordinance missed its target and detonated in the uncanny valley.
'Showgirls' is legitimately very bad, I'm talking piece of shit territory. Yet it clearly wasn't intended to be, you can feel it reaching for, if not greatness, at least adequacy for its entire run time and never quite reaching it, save maybe for the cinematography which at times is very good. On a skeletal level the plot is essentially the same as that of the 1950 Oscar winning film 'All About Eve', both are stories of ambitious young women out to displace an established star. Here this takes the form of Elizabeth Berkley angling to usurpe Gina Gershons position as the queen of Las Vegas erotic dance spectaculars. There are just so many strange choices made here, but playing Berkley's character as decidedly unpleasant and having every other character inexplicably charmed by her, is by far the greatest. One of those films that really needs to be seen to be believed. *1/2
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