No Nomi Dances Here

For some reason - an anniversary I guess? - they're writing about Showgirls all around the blogosphere. Girish helps to lead the way, posts a list of other blogs doing the same, links to Greencine's list...

Alas... this is an orgy I want no part of. I tried, you know, I really did - but the technology failed me - the DVD died an hour or so in. And I have not gone back, and don't expect to go back anytime soon. I am going to quote myself, since I said what I thought then as well as I ever will:

"The odd thing is, it's actually rather difficult to attack it. Film Quarterly, for example, ran a roundtable discussion of it a couple issues back - the contributors ran off the predictable litany of its virtues - it is camp, it is satire, it comments, fairly meaningfully, on gender, race, class, sex, performance, drag, genre, movies, Las Vegas, etc., it establishes visual motifs of the double, the mirror, the whole nine yards. All that is true - that stuff is all there. And it's probably supposed to be there - the style, feel, structure, good bad or indifferent - are pretty clearly intentional. So - why isn't it a neglected, misunderstood masterpiece? Well - partly because all of those things, whether they're in the film or not, are more interesting to talk about than to watch. They are in the film - usually in a bland, literal, calculated way - which it parodies, ironically."

I suppose I should add - when the film came out, it was pushed first as Sex Sex Sex! - then, when it was clear it was going to bomb, bomb, bomb, the marketing started to change, to Camp Camp Camp! At the time it seemed the drive to reposition the film as either So Bad It's Good, or, An Elaborate Joke was as deliberate (if a bit desperate) as the initial SEXSEXSEX marketing campaign. I know one shouldn't let marketing campaigns interfere with the actual experience of the film - but... All the parts are there - everything that would be there in an interesting film - but they're all there in a weird, flat, obvious way. When I watched it last year, I ended up comparing the film to Creed - a group that had all the elements of a rock band, the hair, the guitars, the clothes - but did it without any life at all.

[I should add: that's not fair. Creed is, without much doubt, the worst rock band ever; Showgirls is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst movie ever. Not even close.]