Showgirls (1995)

Basic Instinct is just as overwrought and ludicrous, but it has much better performances, a nice pervy Hitchcock style and a Jerry Goldsmith score, for what that's worth.

I'd have to search or dig up my copy to get exact quotes, but Linda Ruth Williams interviewed Paul Verhoeven for her excellent book, The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, and he says what attracted him to the project was the possibility of creating a world that just overwhelmed you with it's heightened reality. In truth, he nearly does it because the film is almost violently artificial, but it's hamstrung by a script with no such ambition and performances that are positively heinous. In the end, it's greatest value is that it's something to jerk off to on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Basic Instinct is not a bad film per se, but I can't say that I like it. There are things going on under the surface and all that, but I never felt compelled by them. His earlier Dutch film, The Fourth Man, is a faaaar superior (and sexier, I think) version of what he was tackling with Basic Instinct.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/showgirls/1087

Verhoeven fought to have this movie made? I thought it was his only alternative after Carolco pulled the plug on his Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Crusade, in favor of Cutthroat Island.

Now, I really don't like the movie - at all, not even on an ironic level...just too goddamn boring - but I think Berkeley is pretty much dead-on as the lead. We get way too many movies with heart of gold strippers who read Kafka in between lap danced and are incredibly charismatic. Here we have a performance so forced and lost that it actually fits with the character trying to force her way through life without knowing how you're actually supposed to interact with people. The only kind of person I can think of who would give the kind of lapdance she gives to Kyle MacLaughlin simply to prove a point to another titty dancer is someone without a grasp of who she is and who anyone else is. Because she can't act, she acts like someone who's trying to block through a scene, which is exactly what I would think her character should be. Most actresses aren't brave enough to take such a risk, but Berkeley was too stupid to understand what she was doing.

I didn't know about Verhoven's attempt at 'hyper-realism' (I haven't spent any time researching Showgirls) but if it's true, EB hit it right on the head - entirely by accident I'm sure.

This. For a movie so overburdened by people behaving with all the nuance of a paycheck collecting Al Pacino on PCP, with a plot so cheaply sleazy and so devoted to titillation, it's a minor miracle just how fucking boring it is. Even on the basest level I, even though I get turned on by a slight breeze, had to practically force myself to sit through this only because of my insane fanboy love for Verhoeven.

I have been a big Verhoeven fan for as long as I remember* knowing who he is (age 13 or so?). SG remains my least favorite of his films.

For what it's worth I didn't think Berkley was *that* bad. She has some talent and turned in strong work in one of my favorite films of 1999, AGS.

IMHO SG and it's problems as a movie can be summed up as "stupid, boring, and vapid". It is filled with characters for whom the only emotion the audience is capable of feeling is loathing. There is the potential for an interesting story in there but somewhere along the line either the script or Verhoeven dropped the ball and forgot to include anything remotely thrilling in this 'erotic thriller'


PS Verhoeven does the best commentary tracks ever. Listening to the criterion ROBOCOP track is on my bucket list**
*I even have an Ed Neumeyer autograph
** I feel retarded for even talking about bucket lists. That expression is extremely lame and I promise not to say it again

I'll never understand straight guys.

I LOVE this movie. Saw it opening day in 95 when I was 17. Today I don't think Verhoven was the right Director for this, although I love his work and consider Basic Instinct to be his masterpiece. But Russ Meyer, in his prime, would have been the perfect man for the job as he would have inserted more deliberate humor, which is the only thing Showgirls is lacking although it is funny as fuck but for all the wrong reasons.