585. * ShowgirlsTo: dave@rinkworks.com, sam@rinkworks.com Subject: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:08:07 -0400 Showgirls is not only NOT the worst film ever made- it is a GREAT film- held my interest completely. You guys seem too quick to just go along with the majority opinion here. Paul Verhoeven is a great director - Spetters, Robocop, Total Recall, etc. This is classic Verhoeven. Elizabeth Berkeley is fantastic- the film has a great energy, reminds me a bit of the 'Scarface" remake. Sorry guys, you are dead wrong here- and I know a lot about film. Here are a couple of truly bad films, to compare : "Plenty" with Meryl Streep- Fellini's "8 1/2" - almost anything by Godard after "Breathless". From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:54:58 -0400 > Showgirls is not only NOT the worst film ever made- it is a GREAT > film- held my interest completely. You guys seem too quick to just go > along with the majority opinion here. Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason the majority opinion IS the majority opinion. It's interesting that you defend it on the basis that it "held your interest." Showgirls did, actually, hold my interest. It's not a boring film. I will give it that. But that is probably the most superficial standard for a critical evaluation of a movie that I've ever heard. > Sorry guys, you are dead wrong here- and I know a lot about film. > Here are a couple of truly bad films, to compare : "Plenty" with Meryl > Streep- Fellini's "8 1/2" - almost anything by Godard after > "Breathless". LOL LOL LOL! Yeah, you sure know a lot about film. I don't even know how to respond to that, but thanks for making my day. -- Sam. From: Stephen Keller To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Cc: dave@rinkworks.com Subject: Re: Showgirls review Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:30:00 -0400 He compares it to De Palma "Scarface" to show that they're both... good?? AWESOME! And apparently everything Godard did after his first movie was no good? Some people are just insane. From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> To: Stephen Keller Cc: dave@rinkworks.com Subject: Re: Showgirls review Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:02:11 -0400 > Some people are just insane. The one that gets me is 8 1/2. Possibly the greatest film (in contention, anyway) by one of the world's greatest directors -- NOT AS GOOD AS SHOWGIRLS! Why? Because Showgirls "held my interest." -- Sam. From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> To: Stephen Keller Subject: Re: Showgirls review Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:00:00 -0400 Yeah. Well, I can see not liking 8 1/2 -- it's insane and weird and surreal and all that, and there is certainly a (small) contingent of serious critics/scholars who don't like it. But of course it's better than SHOWGIRLS. Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:06:51 -0400 From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> To: Stephen Keller Subject: Re: Showgirls review I absolutely love 8 1/2, though more after I watched it than during. But yeah, I could entertain an argument of that sort myself, if only the single point to back up the argument was more than "I know about film." -- Sam. To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:25:53 -0400 Wow you know how to create a website - I guess that makes you a film expert. Sorry, my bad. From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:01:49 -0400 > Wow you know how to create a website - I guess that makes you a film > expert. Sorry, my bad. Sarcasm. Well, I suppose I deserved it. I apologize for not doing a better job at engaging you in this debate. I freely admit that just laughing out loud is a terrible debate tactic and impolite besides. I will try to make amends for this by trying to engage you in the debate you asked for now. But seriously, in 12 years of studying, reviewing, and debating film, I've honestly NEVER heard a more outrageous claim than yours. Offhand, I can't even THINK of a more outrageous claim that COULD be made. I have a challenge for you. Try engaging ANY established critic, film historian, film school instructor, or filmmaker (other than Paul Verhoeven himself and any personal friends) in a debate about which is better -- Showgirls, or 8 1/2 -- and see if you can find one that doesn't also laugh at you. Fellini and Godard are universally recognized as two of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived. But in the same breath you sing the praises of one of the cheesiest, most superficial, melodramatic, indulgent, unperceptive mainstream films of the last several decades, you dismiss Fellini's single greatest work (some prefer La Dolce Vita, but it's close) and all but Godard's first film. If you're going to make a claim like that, you're going to have to at least *try* to back it up. Making the blanket statement as if it is self-evident isn't good enough. If you tried to justify your stance, I'd respect you a lot more, though probably not your taste. Fellini's 8 1/2 captures, better than probably any other film ever made, the mental state of a man frustrated by his passions -- of women and of art -- and how those passions turn into obsessions when he strives to fulfill them and finds that he is just not good enough with either to do so. This alone is an amazingly perceptive picture to paint of the way creative and sexual urges tear at the psyche. But then consider that this film is largely autobiographical (Fellini himself is a much better director than his main character, of course, but that doesn't mean he felt that he was), and suddenly the film is astonishing for how incisively and deeply personal it is. Then consider that the film's visual style is so cutting that it burns itself in the mind. No one who has seen it can forget the iconic images in it. Consider, too, that the film is complex, powerful, and universally truthful enough to mean different things to different people in different walks of life. It is rare for any work of art to possess this kind of character. But the themes of the film are not merely insightful but relate to a wide variety of life experience. The film can speak to a young artist as an expression of the urges and frustrations he is just starting to wrestle with. An older person can see the film as a kind of tragic story about what happens when someone becomes blinded by those passions and loses his way. If you're not an artist, per se, still the themes in the film translate into other areas of human endeavor. It's hard *not* to be able to relate to it on some level, at least if you make an effort to watch the film actively. True, it does not hold your hand. It's not The Human Condition For Dummies. It does not "entertain" the passive viewer. That doesn't mean it's not a great film. It simply has higher aspirations than causing its audience to temporarily not notice the passage of time. Not all of Fellini's work is great, of course. I'm not saying Fellini is immune to criticism. Some of the films he made after 8 1/2 are just lunatic. I have a deep loathing, for instance, for Fellini Satyricon, which seems to be a celebration of unpleasant, abrasive imagery. But even that is clearly the work of a master filmmaker who took a wrong turn. As opposed to Showgirls, which is memorable primarily because of how laughably contrived and artificial the writing and acting is. You think Berkeley's performance was like Pacino's in Scarface? Seriously? Berkeley's emotional range in the film goes from pouty to pissed and back again, with occasional detours to animalistic moaning, and nowhere else. There is not one nuance in her performance. Not one line reading, not one expression, not one gesture that has a complexity greater than the absolute surface interpretation of the moment. Great art works on multiple levels. It is about nuance (even in the context of grand, sweeping gestures). The entire film of Showgirls is bereft of any such nuance or complexity. There is no line, emotion, or character that goes any deeper than the bare surface meaning. If a character is bad, he's bad. If a character is good, she's good. If a line means one thing, it absolutely means nothing else. If a character is feeling one emotion, that character is never, ever, ever simultaneously feeling another. In other words, it's a film that purports to be a shocking expose about a particular kind of lifestyle, when, in fact, it does not resemble anything even remotely HUMAN. I haven't said a word about film techniques. You claim to know a lot about film. Tell me one moment in Showgirls wherein the editing, or the cinematography, or the sound effects, or anything at all accomplishes anything beyond simply the raw mechanics of filmmaking. There really isn't any such thing. I admit, it's all *functional*. The camera is usually pointed in the general direction of the action. The lighting is usually such that the action can be seen. I could even get behind an aesthetic appreciation of the costumes and art decoration. As I recall, none of this seemed particularly inspired, but it did sort of "look good." But it certainly didn't see Las Vegas with a perceptive eye, or a fresh perspective, or insight. If it did, there would be actual ideas in the film. But what, ultimately, is the film saying? I know what its intention was, of course. It wanted to cast some light on the cruel, backstabbing world of backstage Las Vegas. But Showgirls is clearly more interested in the sensationalistic details. One of the characters in Showgirls disparages the Vegas stage shows as having theatrical pretentions but that people only go to see them to look at women. This observation essentially applies equally to the film itself. Showgirls has exactly the same kind of theatrical pretentions, but when it gets right down to business, it's really only about showing off women. But it's worse, somehow, perhaps because it also seems keen on preaching to its audience. I don't honestly mind preachy films, as many do. But when I'm being preached at by something without a single actual idea, it's downright unstomachable and certainly cannot be called great for doing so. No doubt you disagree with my comments above. I look forward to your rebuttal. I just hope you don't try to get away with claiming the high ground just by saying you "know more about film," which you've now done twice. Argue the issues, not the credentials, and you'll establish your credentials in doing so. In closing: If you'd said you liked Showgirls and it was a guilty pleasure for you, I wouldn't have objected in the slightest. You're not "wrong" to like Showgirls, any more than I'm "wrong" not to. Although Showgirls is not a guilty pleasure of my own, I can understand how someone else might enjoy it in spite of its superficiality, and why should I have a problem with that? Certainly I have guilty pleasures of my own that are no better. But to mistake a film that "holds your interest" as a great film, better than the best work of Fellini and Godard, it betrays you as a film enthusiast who has not yet come to understand an important thing about film criticism: how great a film is is a very different thing from how you feel about it. -- Sam. To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:03:22 -0400 OK- thanks for replying and getting real. I have never looked into Showgirls beyond my fantastic experience watching the film- I just looked into Wikipedia: "...After failing at the US box office, Showgirls enjoyed huge success on the home video market; generating more than $100 million from video rentals [2] also having become one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers...". Damn, that's a lot of people out there who like this movie- pretty strange for the WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. You can't tell me that all these people are merely snarkily dissecting it for their film criticism classes. People are watching it, often multiple times and getting enjoyment from it. So what- you gonna tell me that the guy who directed Robocop, Spetters and Total Recall - masterpieces all - inexplicably made THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME?! I am not trying to compare Elizabeth Berkeley to Pacino- although her performance was excellent. Fine- she is no method actress- how many do we need? So what if the film was loaded with cliches?- so was the dePalma Scarface- this in no way detracted from the strong points of either film. The overall effect was greater than the sum of the parts. The energy, the excitement, the wild roller-coaster ride. You gotta look at this movie from a fresh point of view, and put aside the consensus of film critics- sometimes the masses are just smarter. If you think post-Breathless Godard is a better director than Verhoeven- I have to wonder how many of these Godard "artworks" you have actually seen. If you could sit through more than one, I salute your endurance. I actually managed to sit almost halfway through 'Numero deux' - which probably places me in a very select, stoic group. It makes me almost physically ill to see Godard placed, over and over, in the same sentence as Truffaut- as if they were peers. To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:20:27 -0400 One last thing - I just cannot fathom your objections to Showgirls as being pretentious and preachy- some character in the film is criticizing Vegas as being phony or exploitative of women? I hardly even noticed- it was certainly not significant enough to qualify as a theme of the film. From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:30:57 -0400 > Damn, that's a lot of people out there who like this movie- pretty > strange for the WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Once again, let me reiterate that I am not Dave, who wrote the review you are responding to. Dave said it was the worst movie he's ever seen. Is he somehow wrong because some other people liked it? No. No more than the other people are wrong for liking it. Liking or disliking a movie is subjective. Nobody's wrong in liking or disliking anything. Showgirls is not the worst movie *I've* ever seen. But it was certainly a terrible experience for me. That is inarguable. In my letter to you, I gave you reasons why, besides being something I personally hated, it is an utter failure of a work of art. There is some subjectivity in that call, too, but in the end, I gave you reasons why I thought the film failed to achieve what it set out to do. You, in turn, have not really made any particular arguments in kind. Citing box office or home video receipts doesn't count. The fact that a lot of people *saw* a movie doesn't have anything to do with how good it is. For that matter, a lot of people *liking* a movie doesn't have anything to do with how good it is. If you want to convince me a movie is a good movie, you have to talk about -- intuitively enough -- THE MOVIE. But never mind that for a moment. Let me address the point you raise. Mind you, I'm not saying that if you're right -- that a skillion people worldwide watched and loved Showgirls as you did -- that necessarily means Showgirls is a good movie. But I am unconvinced that your claim is even true. There's a dirty little secret about movies with strong sexual content. Most of them do very well on home video, or at least disproportionately better compared to their theatrical runs. Of *course* a mainstream movie with sexual content -- specifically, the FIRST truly mainstream NC-17 movie ever, and from a name director besides -- will generate a lot of curiosity, of the kind more interested in having that experience in the privacy of their homes, rather than in the theaters. (Basic Instinct and Striptease, just to name two examples [about which I am not making any implied statement of quality], also did disproportionately well on home video.) The REAL question we should be asking is, did all these people actually LIKE the experience of the film? IMDb's average user rating is 3.9, with 22,595 votes. Anything less than 6 is bad, and less than 5 is wretched. But never mind the average. If you look at the breakdown, TWO THIRDS of those 22,595 people didn't like the movie, and an additional 10% only thought it was average. Contrast this with your deplored Fellini film, 8 1/2, which garnered nearly the exact same number of IMDb votes but averaged 8.2, enough to secure the #151 spot on the Top 250 list. Only about 10% of all voters disliked it, and a full 43% gave it the top rating. Again, do I think any of this means anything? Not really, honestly. The IMDb is a great barometer of film *popularity*, though skewed toward geek tastes, but I don't put much stock in it as a heuristic for artistic evaluation. But you brought this line of reasoning up, so I rolled with it. > I just cannot fathom your objections to Showgirls as > being pretentious and preachy- some character in the film is > criticizing Vegas as being phony or exploitative of women? > I hardly even noticed- it was certainly not significant enough to > qualify as a theme of the film. It isn't? Then what IS the theme of the film!? That's exactly what the film is ABOUT. Berkley's character goes to Vegas, tries to make it in show business, and everywhere she turns, evil producers are exploiting her, chewing her up, and spitting her out. Verhoeven and Eszterhas will *tell* you that that's theme of the film. If that isn't the theme, I'd really love to know what you think it is. > I am not trying to compare Elizabeth Berkeley to Pacino- although her > performance was excellent. Fine- she is no method actress- how many do > we need? Er. Well I never said she needed to be a *method* actress, but for all I know she *is* a method actress. She's just not very good at it. Method acting isn't synonymous with great acting. Laurence Olivier, whom some say is the greatest actor of all time (not me, but he's top 10 material at the very least) was notoriously critical of the pretentions of method acting. Method acting is basically an acting technique. The great method actors, Brando and Pacino and so on, achieve a certain kind of focused but naturalistic effect with their performances with it. It's wonderful when it works, and it works differently with each actor, so I'm confused about your remark "how many do we need?" as if one method actor is interchangeable with another. I merely demand that Berkley be a *good* actress, method or not. If you believed her performance and were drawn in, I cannot argue that ("No, you didn't believe her!" is a silly thing for me to say), but you are pretty firmly in the minority with that opinion. Berkley's performance was so notorious at the time that she won the 1995 Worst Actress award at the Razzies. Moreover, it killed her career. She hasn't gotten a lead role in a prominent film since and certainly never since been used to market another film. (And if people actually liked her, the studios would have made darn sure to leverage that popularity.) > So what- you gonna tell me that the guy who directed Robocop, Spetters > and Total Recall - masterpieces all - inexplicably made THE WORST > MOVIE OF ALL TIME?! Great directors have made great catastrophes before. Sidney Lumet made that Gloria remake. Spielberg made 1941. Coppola made Jack. Boyle made The Beach. Boorman made Exorcist II. Frankenheimer made Reindeer Games. It happens. It's actually REALLY rare for a prolific great director not to fall flat on his face now and again. But Verhoeven isn't in this league. He's a lot better than Showgirls would suggest, for sure. And I haven't seen Spetters, so I'll reserve judgment on that one. But I've seen Flesh and Blood, Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, Hollow Man, and Black Book. There isn't a single title in that list that strikes me as a great film. Black Book perhaps comes closest. I thought that one was possibly great when I saw it, though it's proven to be rather forgettable in the couple years since I saw it. That's kind of unlike Verhoeven. He does tend to make memorable movies. But here's my problem with Verhoeven. Black Book excepted, EVERY SINGLE ONE of those titles follows a pattern: he starts with a great idea, promises to explore it, and then, instead, goes to town on sex and violence. He's *good* at sex and violence, so good that he distracts audiences from the fact that he completely failed to live up to the promise of the ideas his movies are built upon. And so a lot of people who are into sex and violence LOVE him, because his movies don't FEEL like gratuitous displays of sex and violence, because there is some intelligence under the hood. The problem is, that intelligence isn't DOING anything. Here's what I mean. Hollow Man is an invisible man story. This premise (like the amnesia/memory-replacement idea in Total Recall) is one of those cliches that CANNOT become worn out, because there is SO much cool stuff you can do to explore this basic idea. You can go the metaphor route and examine how being literally invisible mirrors how a character's insecurities make him feel. You could go the humor route and think up all kinds of ways invisibility could be used for comic or whimsical purposes. (I'd love to have seen a Buster Keaton invisible man film.) And even though the Claude Rains classic can scarcely be improved upon, there is room for more thrillers. The ideas, both for the external plot and the psychological arcs of the characters, are limitless. But Hollow Man, despite being fascinating and visually dazzling for the first half, sidetracks itself from bringing closure to the good stuff and lapses into gratuitous sex and violence mode for the second half. Not since Snake Eyes has a movie with so much promise ended so badly. Total Recall was not nearly that kind of train wreck. But again, the promise of exploring some interesting ideas about how much or how little our memories define who we are -- are our personalities the sum total of our memories, or is there something more? or is it not our memories that define our identities but how we choose to process them? -- ultimately gives way to brainless sci-fi fighting with astonishingly terrible special effects. Contrast Total Recall with other amnesia/memory thrillers (Mirage, Memento, Dark City, Spellbound, Open Your Eyes, Dead Again) or dramas (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Random Harvest), and one quickly realizes just how much Total Recall DOESN'T accomplish. Total Recall is fine as popcorn entertainment. And there's nothing wrong with a movie that's "just" good popcorn entertainment. But it's not great art and not worthy to be compared with it. It certainly doesn't elevate Verhoeven's name to the level of the great directors. Robocop. Great potential there for a satire on how machines are taking over our lives and squeezing the humanity out of human society. It starts out that way. Lots of moments in the first half play with this idea and seem to be trying to say something. But once again, Verhoeven ceases to remain interested in bringing closure to these elements once he's gotten to the point where he can throw in a lot of spraying blood. Once that happens, the ideas get completely forgotten, and he's just all about the gore. Starship Troopers follows exactly the same pattern, except the ideas weren't as well-formed to start with, and the acting is horrendous. Basic Instinct and Showgirls start out with more character-centered ideas. But nothing in Basic Instinct wasn't already done better by a couple dozen films noir from the 1940s -- except for the sex. Showgirls, alas, didn't even really start with a great idea. "MEN ARE EVIL AND EXPLOIT WOMEN" is hardly an insightful examination of sexual politics. I'm not inherently opposed to sex and violence in film, mind you. I thought Eyes Wide Shut and Saving Private Ryan, for example, were brilliant in their use of these things to do what they set out to do. There are lots of other examples. But in Verhoeven's films, the sex and violence isn't used to explore his ideas. His ideas are used as an excuse for the sex and violence. I have cautious hopes for Verhoeven after Black Book, though. Again, I didn't think it was *quite* the level of "great," but it was very good -- the first movie I've seen of his that actually stuck with the story throughout the whole running time. Seriously -- IT HAS A THIRD ACT. That's a giant step forward. If he keeps that up, he runs the risk of actually becoming that great director you say he is. -- Sam. To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:10:39 -0400 I'm not going to argue your points about Verhoeven. They were interesting, well-reasoned and quite plausible- several of those films I have not seen. You may be right about Verhoeven's use of sex and violence as being gratuitous. I am going to have to do some serious thinking about that issue. Still, I am not a major fan of sex and violence in films - and I am not alone in thinking that Verhoeven does handle this stuff better than most directors. But your point about the IMDB survey doesn't strike me as very convincing. One cannot statistically extrapolate from a non-random sample to the general population, of course, and this seems like a very biased sample- exactly the kind of sample you DON'T want in order to generalize - web-savvy film buffs- we already knew that those kind of people have a lot in common with professional film critics and of course THEY hated Showgirls. And the general population not only "saw" it - which sounds rather passive, they talked to their friends, got good word of mouth and paid for the rentals. And given that widespread, cheap, easy-access hardcore and softcore porn has been around for quite some time - it seems unjustified to assume that people watched Showgirls just to get off ( a couple of short lapdance scenes?). What- no defense of Godard (;-) ? From: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:58:59 -0400 > Still, I am not a major fan of sex and violence in films - and I am > not alone in thinking that Verhoeven does handle this stuff better > than most directors. I can probably go along with that. > One cannot statistically extrapolate from a non-random sample to the > general population, of course, and this seems like a very biased > sample- exactly the kind of sample you DON'T want in order to > generalize - web-savvy film buffs- we already knew that those kind of > people have a lot in common with professional film critics and of > course THEY hated Showgirls. Absolutely true. On the other hand, it's not an insignificant metric to take into account with other metrics. > And the general population not only "saw" it - which sounds rather > passive, they talked to their friends, got good word of mouth and paid > for the rentals. There is a lot of cult interest in watching notoriously bad movies for fun. The review you replied to came from our whole web feature *about* watching bad movies for fun. Dave didn't think Showgirls was that fun, but we both LOVE "Sinbad of the Seven Seas" with Lou Ferrigno, which is an absolutely terrible movie. Again, commercial success is a terrible barometer of artistic quality. Just about every single week, there's at least one bad movie that opens to a lot of money and one good one that doesn't. Otherwise we could all just agree that Titanic is the greatest film of all time and call it a day. That a lot of people rented Showgirls is a win for the marketing department of the studio. Anything beyond that, and you have to start asking the people that saw it what they think of it. Even then, the best you can establish that way is popularity, not artistic greatness. > And given that widespread, cheap, easy-access hardcore and softcore > porn has been around for quite some time - it seems unjustified to > assume that people watched Showgirls just to get off ( a couple of > short lapdance scenes?). In 1995, not *as* easy-access or anonymous as today. In fact, since the Internet became commonplace in the home, the commercial success of sex-driven theatrical films has gone down quite a bit, possibly except for arthouse films and in comedies, neither of which do what cheapie softcore does. In any case, the institutionalized nature of mainstream film legitimizes the experience. It's not embarrassing to take "Showgirls" up to the video rental counter, whereas "Vivacious Vixen Vampires" would make a lot of potential consumers hesitate. > What- no defense of Godard (;-) ? I had enough to say without getting into that. Honestly, I sort of know where you're coming from. I'm not with you on it at all -- I maintain that Godard is a great director. But you did excuse his best film from criticism, and you mentioned Truffaut, whom I vastly prefer to Godard. Godard's films can feel cold, whereas Truffaut's are warm and snuggly but just as incisive. But yeah, come on -- to dismiss as worthless stuff like Masculine/Feminine, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, and even his slighter works like Week End and La Chinoise is surely an overstatement, right? -- Sam. From: Dave Parker Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:19:14 -0600 Look, you guys can argue all you want about the merits of different movies, directors, actors/actresses, and all that jazz. But here's why I think Showgirls is the worst movie ever: Because it's a steaming pile of dookie. Because it tried so hard to be relevant, have a message worth listening to, and took itself so seriously, and utterly and completely failed at everything it tried to do. It didn't even successfully titillate me when I watched it, and that's usually the ONE thing Verhoeven is GOOD at! Come on, 90% of the selling point of that movie was "Liz Berkley gets naked a lot" and it didn't even get THAT right--I was tired of her being naked by the middle of the movie, I just wanted the damn thing to end. There wasn't a single scene in the movie that left me with anything but a vauge sense of discomfort. And that's not the GOOD kind of discomfort you get from watching a movie that actually touches upon subjects you'd rather not think about but are important, or that reveal the hidden horrors of something you actually care about or are affected by in your life. No, it's the kind of discomfort you feel when people are embarassing the hell out of themselves and you don't know what to say to them to get them to stop. It's like watching your best friend get drunk and make an *** out of himself in front of his ex-girlfriend at a party, and not being able to stop him from digging himself deeper. It's like being an innocent bystander when a married couple screams at each other in the middle of a restaurant. It's like listening to a person spout racial epithets. THAT kind of discomfort. Every scene that went by I felt worse and worse. And no, I wasn't feeling the emotion the movie wanted me to feel. I wasn't feeling bad for the CHARACTERS. I was feeling bad for myself, for my girlfriend and her friend that were having to sit through this crap, and for the people involved in making the steaming pile of dookie in the first place. I was feeling sad for everybody who ever got duped into watching it. I felt bad for Elizabeth Berkley because I knew that movie would probably end her career (and it effectively did). And yeah, there are probably tons of movies you can name that are "worse" in some way than Showgirls. Worse writing, worse plot, worse acting, whatever. But what makes Showgirls "the worst" for me is that it had every chance NOT to suck and didn't. Paul Verhoeven isn't the best director in the world, but he's far from the worst--he can make decent movies, for sure. Elizabeth Berkley isn't the worst actress in the world, either. It had major studio support, it had a big budget, it had everything in place to be at least a fair to middlin' movie, and it FAILED UTTERLY. And perhaps worst of all, it had such pretensions of greatness. It really, really, really tried hard to be great, and just failed over and over. It's easy to make a crappy movie on no budget. Crappy movies get made all the time by crappy directors, or starring crappy actors. You expect the majority of those movies to fail, because they don't have the things they need in place to succeed. Showgirls HAD the things it needed in place to be at least a decent movie, and it couldn't manage it. And when you aim so high, and have every advantage in place to help you, and fail so utterly, that's failure of epic proportions. -- Dave To: The Rink <sam@rinkworks.com> Subject: Re: Showgirls Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:27:15 -0400 Wow - little did I realize that Showgirls is a tremendously controversial film, with lots of people out there representing all of our opinions. http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3D1171 According to this article ( a four-star review ) , Film Quarterly hosted an "extensive" critical roundtable on it in 2005. Showgirls must be understood as pop-culture satire- this reviewer sees satire of the 'Star is Born' genre, in particular. People care about this film, dammit! That's got to stand for something. I think that there are just too many people who roar passionately about what a "bad" movie it is, but yet enjoy it anyway on several levels. So one can apparently love and hate it. Noone walks out of "Showgirls" - and walking out of a bad porn movie is commonplace. To me, a bad movie is a boring movie- a movie you cannot sit through out of boredom- Godard's "Numero Deux', for example. You admitted that the film made you cringe as if witnessing a friend embarrass himself publicly. Fine. But this is EXACTLY the essential qualities of the BEST satirical entertainment we have on TV and the movies nowadays. "The Office", 'Curb Your Enthousiasm", "40 year old Virgin", 'Dumb and Dumber", 'Knocked Up", etc. This is probably the most time I've ever spent on a laughably silly debate, and I let myself get suckered into them all the time. While it evolved into a debate about movies that will only interest other movie people, there are some hilarious lines peppered throughout. I love "Fine- she is no method actress- how many do we need?" and "Noone walks out of 'Showgirls' - and walking out of a bad porn movie is commonplace." I love that he said that Las Vegas producers exploiting women -- an idea that Showgirls bludgeons us over the head with in every scene -- was something he "hardly even noticed." I love his confidence that if I compared Showgirls with 8 1/2, I would realize how great Showgirls was. And, of course, I love it when people use "I know a lot about film" to try to convince you that their opinion carries more weight than yours. |
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