This is more of a memory thing. A few years ago, I was watching Showgirls and in a flash, an interpretation came to me that, instead of being a cliche-ridden, poorly acted soft-core porno gigglefest, it was actually a brilliant film making some sort of profound, witty comment on something or other.
But I didn’t write my unique interpretation down, or tell it to anyone so now I wonder if maybe I dreamt it. I can’t remember anything besides it was a strange interpretation but very insightful take on a film that is universally (and very unjustly) derided.
It is no better or worse than the average Hallmark Movie or Netflix Christmas movie. Just a lot more nudity. It was one of the first films to get an NC-17 rating (but by no means the first) and a lot of its popularity was apparently seeing Jesse from Saved by the Bell nude and playing a stripper.
Critics did not love it as it only has a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and 38% with the audience. It did better with audiences on the IMDB with a still poor 5.1.
A few critics liked aspects of it as fast moving and showing the seedy side of Las Vegas? Was that in question?
I honestly only remember it for being soft-porn. I’d never describe it as a “great film.” Perhaps it has some notable place in movie history but I am not sure what that might be.
No, nothing to do with Las Vegas, strippers, Saved by the Bell, nothing to do with anything on the surface of the movie. It was far more profound than any of that, like the film had a meta-meaning of some sort. That’s what’s so frustrating about trying to recall what I was thinking. It was almost purely intellectual and pretty far-fetched.
There are people who believe Showgirls and Starship Troopers contained so much over-the-top melodrama that they couldn’t possibly have been mere bad movies, they must’ve been some sort of more sophisticated social critique.
I find that somewhat convincing in the case of Starship Troopers, less so for Showgirls. Both of these feel like nothing so much as Verhoeven deciding to make a movie with a lot of boobs, then stepping back and saying “alright, we’re gonna need some egghead stuff in here to make this look like a bit more than what it is.”
As with all Verhoeven movies (most especially Starship Troopers) the argument is that all those terrible aspects of the movie are actually parody, and by complaining about them you just “don’t get it”
The counter argument (that I would agree with) is that making a parody does not mean making crappy movie. The parody card doesn’t excuse you from bad filmmaking (and in the case of Showgirls pretty blatant misogyny).
You only have to look at Verhoeven’s own movies to see that. RoboCop is absolutely satirizing American culture but it’s also a great movie.
It’s a long shot, that someone would have had the same profound interpretation that I did (or that I dreamt). It’s such a weird memory. I can’t completely believe that I actually had it. It’s like I was high (I wasn’t) when I came up with this idea, and forgot it when I came off my high.
The frustrating thing is I HAVE watched it several times since then, and it’s just been a painful T&A show replete with ludicrous dialogue and unbearable characters.
It doesn’t exist. I mean, if you want, you can search Reddit for arguments to the contrary and see what you think about it. But the reality is that people just struggle to make sense out of an established director like Verhoeven making a softcore porn flick to showcase a former child actress’s boobies. Maybe it does have some thin thread of something we can call social critique, but if so, it’s washed out by the fact that this is first and foremost a T&A romp.
Showgirls was universally panned upon release and is consistently ranked as one of the worst films ever made. Despite this, Showgirls has become regarded as a cult film and has been subject to critical re-evaluation, with some notable directors and critics considering it a serious satire worthy of praise.[11]
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Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, “satire” isn’t the right word. But it’s inadvertently funny. So it’s found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.[25][18]
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Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum and J. Hoberman,[92] as well as filmmakers Jim Jarmusch,[93]Adam McKay[94] and Jacques Rivette,[95] have gone on the record defending Showgirls as a serious satire.[96] In a 1998 interview, Rivette called it “one of the great American films of the last few years”, though “very unpleasant: it’s about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that’s Verhoeven’s philosophy”.[95]Quentin Tarantino has stated that he enjoyed Showgirls, referring to it in 1996 as the “only … other time in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie”, comparing it to Mandingo.[97]
Showgirls has been compared to the 1950 film All About Eve as a remake, update, or rip-off of that film.[98][99] For Rosenbaum, “Showgirls has to be one of the most vitriolic allegories about Hollywood and selling out ever made”.[93] “Verhoeven may be the bravest and most assured satirist in Hollywood, insofar as he succeeds in making big genre movies no one knows whether to take seriously or not”, wrote Michael Atkinson.[100] - SOURCE
Without having any personal experience in stripping or dancing I thought it was a realistic portrayal of the seedy side of an otherwise respectable career. Believable to me that the club owners are predatory and nasty.
The choreography was incredible, the athleticism of the dancers cannot be denied.
When a filmmaker makes a bad movie with bad acting and bad actors and cheesy dialogue and later says he did on purpose because…satire, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. When he does it several times it’s because he’s just making bad movies.