Well the story is
about a girl called Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) coming to Vegas with
nothing more than the clothes she's wearing and a passion to become a
show dancer. She meets Molly (Gina Ravera) who helps her out with a
place to stay until she can get her dancing career going. Soon enough
she's competing for a spot in a show with the biggest star of the
business Cristal (Gina Gershon). Then of course money and greed step
in and things go wrong. Simple and even stupid story, but yet so
familiar from quite a many Hollywood fame and fortune movies, this is
just told with a bit more exploitation. This movie rocked the
Razzie's in it's days with 13 nominations and 7 wins, but what made it even
better was that Paul Verhoeven himself actually showed up to receive
the awards for worst movie and worst director. And that's something
special right there. It also failed miserably on the box office, even
though it later became the highest grossing NC-17 movie of all time.
But this movie was a huge success on home video, reeling in more than
100 million dollars, that's pretty clear indication that people
rather watch "porn" at home and not at the theaters, even if it's a satire wrapped in softcore sex like this one.
But that's not all this
movie is, it's actually a lot more. Even though there's no goofball
comedy or witty jokes, this movie is a comedy. It's a satire about
the roles of women in many Hollywood movies, the fact that it's done
in an exploitative manner is probably why many people seem to miss
that point. After all most Hollywood movies are male made male
fantasies, they are just politically correctly covered in less
exploitative themes. So when this movie hides nothing and couldn't
care less about being politically correct it's misunderstood, either
intentionally or unintentionally. Those who intentionally
misunderstand it see that this could just as well be any other movie
out there where a woman is trying to earn a living, just replace the
usual romance and comedy with sex and drama and that scares them.
Those who unintentionally misunderstand it just can't see the big
picture behind the tits and asses. The big picture of course is that
satirically every woman in this movie who thrives for success is
nothing more than a sexual object for men and advance through their
career by deceiving other women. Sure many people see that as a flaw
in the character development, but it's the ending which really ties
the satire together. I won't give out any details even though you
can't really spoil a movie like this. When the movie ends with it's
themes of empowerment of women it's just pure comedy brilliance. It's
of course tragic as it makes you realize how similar many other woman
characters in other Hollywood movies are, but still you have to admit
it's also funny as hell.
The acting is from bad to
worse most of the time, though funnily enough the black actors and
actresses gave out by far the best performances. I'm willing to bet
my money on that being deliberate as many from this cast can do and
has done a whole lot better. And that's just another indication of
this being a satire. My only complaint is the running time, at a bit
over two hours this is on the edge of becoming boring at times, but
luckily there's plenty of eye candy to balance out those few moments
when the comedy stalls. This movie is pure camp brilliance and a
great satire, though obviously hugely misunderstood.
90%
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