Showgirls

Paul Verhoeven
1995

My camp/kitsch obsessed sister made the whole family sit down and watch this notorious albatross together over the Thanksgiving holiday, and after viewing I can definitely say that it stands up to it's reputation as one of the worst movies ever made (in the best way possible). Respectable actors (mainly Gina Gershon and Kyle MacLachlan) come off as "in on the joke" hamming it up and reveling in all the sleaze, but the rest of the cast, Elizabeth Berkley included, play it painfully serious, providing some unintended(?) schadenfreude-tinged laughs. Say what you want about the cheese factor, but Verhoeven doesn't skimp on the flesh and shamelessness. Berkley's sex scenes and dances invariably involve a high and somewhat disturbing degree of thrashing, and when she's actually wearing clothes the wardrobe is jaw-droppingly tacky. Verhoeven's European status makes this gaudy take on the "American Dream" all the more rewarding. I couldn't see a U.S. director tackling the heights of bad taste with such a quixotic earnestness. In an age where Ashley Dupre, the hooker NY gov Spitzer was caught diddling, is now achieving minor celebrity, I find Berkley's steadfast determination to "keep her soul" by avoiding prostitution plain preposterous. The film makes the boundaries so hazy, and the lines so shaky, as to make any sort of moral question a flat tire.