Once again we failed in our attempts to get our next movie on our list. This film was another Turkish movie called Sut Mat (Yes Sir) (2007) which stars Mehmet Ali Erbil, who was also in our #55 movie Keloglan vs The Black Prince, (click here for the review). If it's anywhere near as bad as Keloglan, then it's fair to say, we have had a lucky escape.
This meant 2 movies to replace this movie and the first offering is probably the best known movie we have reviewed so far. It is the 1996 flop Showgirls, starring Saved By The Bell’s Elizabeth Berkley.
I do remember watching this as a 19 year old, lured in mainly by the prospect of seeing Berkley in her birthday suit led on by my up and down hormones, (today I’m lucky if I can get up and down the stairs). I remember going into the cinema a bit red and flustered, embarrassed but excited and giving a knowing nod to the young men of a similar age.
What happened during the movie was totally unexpected by all of us that day. Instead of a saucy arousing experience, we were treated to 2hrs of hilarity. I have never heard an audience laugh so hard at a movie which was supposed to be a serious drama. Heck, I had never heard an audience laugh so hard at a movie which was supposed to be a comedy!
So what made us guffaw with such gusto on that day? Was it just 19 year old Colin and his peers being childish? It was time to find out……
The movie centres around Nomi Malone, (Berkley), who has come to Las Vegas to become a dancer. She quickly realises this dream by becoming a dancer, albeit a topless one at seedy nightclub called Cheetah. She also quickly befriends Molly Abrams, (Gina Ravera), a seamstress at Stardust Casino, who put on epic dancing shows which are essentially also topless dancing, but with a pretence of being artistic and less dollars stuffed into g-strings.
Nomi is introduced to diva dancer Cristal Connors, (Gina Gershon), who on discovering Nomi works in Cheetahs, suggests that she is a lady of the night and will do favours for food. This does not seem to bother Cristal however, as she takes her boyfriend and entertainment director of Stardust, Zack Carey, (Kyle MacLachlan), to watch her ‘dance’ at Cheetahs.
Cristal pays Nomi to give Zack a lap-dance. Zack seems to be enjoying it and would have stayed longer, but something comes up.
Cristal seems impressed and manages to get a part for Nomi in ‘Goddess’, a dance show which Cristal is currently performing in. Nomi’s happiness is short lived when an appearance to promote the show at a boat show turns out to be doing favours for Yachtsmen, (polishing their masts or something).
Nomi gets her revenge by sleeping with Zack, (in a hilarious sex scene in a pool, but more on that later). This gets the added bonus of Zack promoting her to Cristal’s understudy.
Cristal is a bit miffed and things come to a head when, after a heated argument during a performance, Nomi pushes Cristal down the stairs. With Cristal’s hip broken, Nomi is promoted to star of the show. (So remember kids, if you want to succeed in the world, act like a complete shit, just like Nomi).
Nomi’s world comes crashing down however, when Molly is raped and beaten by Andrew Carver, a musician who Molly had idolised and a celebrity client of Stardust. Nomi wants Molly to go to the police, but Zack blackmails Nomi into keeping quiet after finding out that Nomi is really called Polly, a prostitute with drug offences on an assault charge, (yeah, because Nomi has so much to lose!).
Realising Nomi has to take matters into her own hands, she manages to seduce Carver, take him to a hotel room and then to beat him to a bloody pulp. Nomi lets Molly know Carver has had his comeuppance, she makes amends with Cristal and then leaves Vegas.
Now this movie has its knockers and I am with them on this one. (Sorry, I’ll try my breast to not make too many boob gags!). This is truly a terrible movie with over the top clichéd characters, a clunky script and incredibly poor execution. But the saving grace is that it is crammed full of unintentionally hilarious scenes, for example, that famous pool sex scene.
For those that have not seen it, it essentially involves Berkley with legs wrapped around MacLachlan in a swimming pool, bending over backwards and throwing her back and head up and down as if she is convulsing and having a very serious epileptic fit. It’s supposed to be sexy, arty and powerful, but it’s not, it’s weird, it’s exaggerated to the point of farce and it’s incredibly funny.
In fact Berkley spends the entire movie thrashing her head and hair around for anything and everything she does. Lapdance, thrash her head around, sexy time, thrash her head around, eat a cheeseburger, thrash her head around. Each door is thrown open, each tub of coke is smashed down onto the table and each question is asked with windmill like arms. Berkley’s performance contains no subtlety whatsoever and is smashed into your face with a jet powered sledgehammer throughout.
I don’t find her dancing that good either and about as erotic as a slice of toast, (phowar!). OK, I’ll be the first to admit I have 2 left feet and can’t keep a beat, but I perform a sexier dance than Berkley most Saturday nights when I am trying to take my shoes off after a heavy night on the shandys.
It may seem like I am blaming Berkley entirely for this movie and it’s hard not to when she is the star and appears in every scene. However, I must acknowledge the supporting cast who did not have a lot to work with, but who seemed to then do the bare minimum just to pick up the pay cheque. Their lacklustre performance gives us the clichéd shady businessman, the clichéd ruthless manager and the clichéd super bitch. If we had a man in a top hat, twiddling a thin moustache and tying Nomi to a rail track, we would have had the full set of clichés.
At the end of the day, if you were to have told me that a 2 hour movie with wall to wall boobs throughout would be dull as dishwater, I would not have believed you, but it’s true. This movie is supposed to be a serious drama about how women are mistreated and exploited in the entertainment business, but it is so wide of the mark, that it accidentally knocked Mars out of its orbit.
I can see why 19 year old Colin laughed so hard with the rest of the audience. It’s a mixed up, over the top, clichéd mess. But by far the most shocking thing about this movie is that they have made a sequel, (this time without Berkley). I was going to watch it and compare to the original in this blog, but as I was about to find it on YouTube, I had to answer the front door. Good timing by the postman, Saved By The Bell! *gets coat*
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