Showgirls
reviewed 31 Mar 1996
Yes,
I watched Showgirls. I was curious -- you can't
tell
me a movie is that bad and not make me want to see it.
Well,
let me tell you: Showgirls is proof that Satan is alive
and
well and living with Joe Eszterhas. "Bad" doesn't do this movie
justice
-- try "evil." No, make that "EVIL." If you ever have the
choice
between watching Showgirls and watching paint dry, for god's
sake,
go for the paint. This movie will haunt you the way greasy food
does;
you'll wake up in the middle of the night feeling queasy, not entirely
sure why, but certain that it has something to do with Showgirls.
We thought it would be "so bad it's good" -- well, it's so bad it's
frightening.
There is absolutely nothing redeeming or amusing about it. The
sets
are bad, the costumes are bad, the music is bad, the writing is
stunningly
bad, the acting is mind-numbingly bad. It makes Broken Arrow
look like Casablanca. It actually made me NOT want to go
back
to Las Vegas. It is, in the words of Mr.
Cranky, "so godawful that it ruptures the space and time
continuum."
It will insult, degrade, and disgust men and women, black and white,
gay
and straight. If you derive any enjoyment from this movie, please
go directly to your nearest mental institution and check yourself in to
save society the expense of doing it later. Saying this movie is
bad is like saying Hitler was a little misguided. On Mr.
Showbiz's
thermometer scale, Showgirls is approaching Absolute
Zero.
It's the sort of movie that makes you wish your VCR would
explode.
Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, that it has
reached
a cinematic low point, it digs deep down and dives a little further
into
the muck. Why did we keep watching it? I don't know.
Maybe it was the same sort of sick fascination that makes people slow
down
for car wrecks. Maybe it was a masochism born of two years of
graduate
school. Maybe it was the same macho impulse that makes no one
want
to be the first one to admit they've had enough of this particularly
indigestible
cinematic morsel, like how on a long car trip no one wants to be the
first
to admit they have to pee.
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