That explains Starship Troopers, but what did you think about Showgirls? 
Dripping like a fire hose. Satire executed with all the subtlety of an axe murder in an isolated teen camp. I also read and loved the book so he’d probably lost me before I ever saw it. I can’t say I remember seeing the satire in Showgirls but I remember enough that I am not going back just to see what I missed.
I’m just waiting for the rumored reboot.
“I always get the shakes before a drop.”
It wasn’t supposed to be subtle. That’s what made it hilarious. He put Doogie Howser in a Nazi uniform and played it so straight that you can practically see NPH about to start laughing. He makes fun of his vacuous eye candy while the real hero of the movie, Michael FUCKING Ironside, acts rings around them.
I walked out after about a half-hour. I thought EB really nailed her character, which was an all around loathsome human being, petulant, angry, stupid and self-defeating. I hated her character and wasn’t going to invest any more of my time. It was just really unpleasant. I think that was the point.
I think this is the major thing… any movie that featured that girl’s bare tits and didn’t make big box office must have had SERIOUS flaws. For one thing, it probably wasn’t much of a “date movie” for fans of Saved By The Bell.
Same here. I paid to see it in the theater on opening day and I walked out. I will agree it takes some skill to make a guy in his 20s find all that nudity completely unerotic, but other than that there was nothing worth talking about. The only real answer to the OP’s question is it did so badly because it was a massive pile of shit.
Because it sucked.
It wasn’t Elizabeth Berkeley’s fault anymore than Godfather III was Sofia Coppola’s fault, and less so. EB conveyed the character very well, it is just that the character was given the role of providing the audience point of view and the character was loathsome. Nobody would identify with her except snotty young women sociopaths. I didn’t even stick around for the nudity, which was really odd for me back in my early 30s.
Aye, this is my perception as well.
Demi was much more attractive in ST than EB was in SG. Though EB was pretty good looking she couldn’t compete with Demi’s augmentations.
I disagree. But EB is much more my type. Other than that, yeah Showgirls is an awful movie. Not even in the so bad it’s good category. Just bad.
When this has come up before I never got the argument that “He used a bad script, bad actors, bad plot and cheesy direction on purpose therefor it’s art.” It just makes it a bad movie. Even his movies that I liked at the time have not aged well. I caught Flesh + Blood on cable a little while ago. Rutger Hauer is still compelling in it. But the bad directing is apparent and glaring.
Wasn’t it also like 3 hours long, or am I just remembering that it seemed like it was extraordinarily long by the standards of 1995? That, and it’s one of the few movies I’ve seen that had scads of un-sexy nudity in it, and I was 23 when I saw it.
I subscribe to the Verhoeven sucks explanation though; he botched this movie, and a few years later, he botched Starship Troopers as well. Not to derail the thread, but in that case, it’s like he didn’t read the book (or was too dumb to actually understand it) and based his “satire” on the Cliff’s Notes. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find out that he did a similar job with the source material for “Showgirls”.
Plus, Gina Gershon was better looking than Elizabeth Berkley was in Showgirls, and I think that may have had something to do with it.
And **Striptease **had Burt Reynolds in it…
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There was no source material for Showgirls
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It was known before it was released that Starship Troopers was actually an original script that was retro-fitted to fit the book because it was originally written as a parody/satire that was a bit too close to the original (But far enough away that once it did get the name, fans rioted).
I’ve never seen Showgirls. I did see Striptease on videotape (yes, it was a long time ago). Striptease was a terrible movie, but it was (I’m pretty sure) a terrible movie in a very different way from Showgirls.
Striptease was based on a satitrical and highly political novel by Florida humorist and journalist Carl Hiaasen. All in all, there WASN’T a greeat deal of nudity in the movie. The movie actually had a plot, a rather boring and convoluted plot, about a corrupt Southern politician (Burt Reynolds) and a desperate single Mom (Demi Moore) who took a job at a strip club to make money to support her kid.
I found the movie a snooze, but it was NOT an exploitation movie. Anyone who rented it to see a lot of nekkid women doing naughty things would be extremely disappointed. By contrast, Showgirls seems to have been ALL about nudity and exploitation.
Neither movie was a hit (to put it mildly), but Striptease WAS quite bad for Demi Moore’s career. Quick, name some big movies she’s starred in since that one. Heck, a SMALL role in*** Charlie’s Angels 2 ***was seen as a big comeback for her!
Neither movie ever found an audience at the theaters. Striptease never found an audience at all. Showgirls, at least, seems to have found an appreciative, mostly gay cult audience.
You probably already know this, but for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t: It’s exactly like that. He deliberately avoided reading the book, because he didn’t want it to distort his vision. Which factually and incontrovertibly puts paid to the notion that he makes “satires which are archetypal examples of what they satirize”, since he actually goes out of his way to not know what he’s allegedly satirizing.
I don’t remember Starship Troopers being THAT bad taken on it’s own rights. It was nothing like the book though. Once they realized they weren’t going to be able to afford the bugs AND power suits and would have to choose one or the other they should have walked away or called it something else IMHO.
That would just mean he wasn’t satirizing Starship Troopers, the book. Satirizing war films, or government propaganda, or whatever he was trying to do doesn’t require reading Starship Troopers.
G.I. Jane, plus one of a bazillion small roles in a Woody Allen film. (Seriously, the imdb page for it lists half of Hollywood.)
Charlie’s Angels wasn’t seen as a comeback for her because of Striptease. It was seen as a comeback because she was over 40.
After seeing Flesh+Blood, Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct, I came to the conclusion that Paul Verhoeven has a very grim view of humanity. There are no heroes in his movies. Some villains are more charming than others.