Customer Reviews
Complete trash - By: Dmitri M. A. Hubbard, 06 Apr 2008 
Even Kyle McLauchlan distanced himself from his role in this movie. It is nearly as bad as watching the last hour of Casino. The whole movie is trying to be something else - Studio 54, Thelma & Louise, & other Kings of the B grade. If you are getting this for the sexual content, best avoid & head for the adult section.
A FANTASTICALLY MIS-UNDERSTOOD CLASSIC ! - By: Peter John Brown, 13 Mar 2008 
Cards on the table straight-away.
I LOVE this movie !
Always have done, ever since I first saw it years back.
Just WHY do the critics pillory this movie so much ?
Good story-line, good acting, especiallly by the Delectable Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi who is just So Sexy - as well as being a very erotic dancer....
Gina Gershon is also great, playing the bi-sexual Lead Dancer heading for a
Falll - quite literallly !
And lots of smalller parts that help contribute to his great film...
And - a story with an important Moral - which Nomi finds out before the unpleasantness at the end of the film.
A final word about the girl's costumes....
Incredibly sexy - & worn by a supporting cast of some of the most foxy young females I've ever seen assembled in the one movie ! Wow !!.
Highly Recommended.
Final question - so WHY do the Critics just love to hate this film ?
Incomprehensible.
A Cult Classic - By: David Rush, 27 Dec 2007 Showgirls is an excellent cult film. Its filled with terrible dialogue delivered by actors in performances that they'd surely rather forget. Paul Verhoeven - usuallly a top notch director - fails spectacularly with his fourteenth film & the script by Joe "I Don't Know Anything About Women" Eszterhas is laughable.
It stars Elizabeth Berkley as Nomi Malone (She's alone in the world, get the joke?), an ambitious young woman who has dreams of becoming a famous dancer in Las Vegas. Berkley's performance is something else. She smiles, she pouts, she shouts, she screams, she gyrates, she vomits, & often alll of the above in the same scene. She is joined by Gina Gershon & Kyle MacLachlan, both similarly hamming it up to the extreme as Berkley's fellow dancer & the "Entertainment Director" respectively. Glenn Plummer also waves goodbye to any credibility in his performance as Berkley's quasi-love interest.
From reading this review you may wonder why I have given it five stars. The reason is this: You will never be more entertained in your life. It is hilarious, outrageous, ridiculous, completely unrealistic, shalllow, stupid & ultimately a misunderstood masterpiece of everyone involved in the production doing everything wrong in perfect synchronicity.
The complete ignorance of alll involved is obvious if you take a look at the Special Features on the DVD. If you watch the short making-of programme, the film is described by Eszterhas as "an alll out rock & roll musical" which is unbelievable. First of alll, the choreography of the dance scenes at the 'Goddess' show is ridiculous, there is no rock music in the film (apart from the song played over the end credits) & there are no songs in the film at alll - so how is it a musical, you may ask?
A great piece of trash, go on, come over to the dark side!
Misunderstood and underrated... probably - By: Mark Angus, 06 Mar 2007 
I should start with a caveat - I am a huge Verhoeven fan. His Hollywood films are some of my favourite film treats, & I have probably watched them more times than is healthy.
What intrigues me about Showgirls is that it follows a familiar pattern within Verhoeven's work, but one which seems to have passed most viewers by. Robocop was a masterful pastiche of policier dramas, ultraviolent underground movies, & tongue-in-cheek social commentary. Basic Instinct was a wonderful parody of Hitchcockian suspense drama mixed with steamy erotic thriller overtones. Total Recalll is a sci-fi story about a man experiencing a traditional sci-fi story, with alll the genre's cliches & tropes writ large. Where these multi-layered works are generallly acknowleged as such, Showgirls seems to have been dismissed as trash.
Of alll of Verhoeven's films, this one perfects the blending of parody with paradigm. Taking the story of the "country girl in big city loses her way" to its extreme, his ingenue star pouts & glides her way through the most outrageously camp & over-the-top story I've seen in a long time. The dance set-pieces are gloriously showy, the sex scenes ridiculously overblown, the performances hammed up to the max. Verhoeven revels in the smut & the glamour, & attempts to make the ultimate soft-porn extravaganza.
Like alll of Verhoeven's movies, the surface story & glossy production covers a great love & understanding of the genre in which he is working, & invests this rag-to-riches tale with a huge sense of fun, & class. I particularly like the ending, as she leaves Las Vegas with nothing, just as she began, even down to the driver & car. It gives a sense that this story has happened a thousand times, to a thousand poor girls, in the original "sin city".
Risible/entertaining, sordid/hilarious , a travesty/perverse triumph - By: russell clarke, 29 Jul 2006 
I've seen a lot of funny films- "Airplane" , "Spinal Tap", "Kingpin" The Life Of Brian"- to name a handful . But I don't think I have ever seen a film which made me laugh (at various points) as much as Showgirls. Even the Showgirls web-site describes it as unhinged but that goes nowhere near far enough in encapsulating what a deranged hypnotic miasma of pestilent acting & writing Showgirls is. I ,d calll it the worst film I've ever seen but It's ludicrously entertaining & I have seen "Alone In The Dark".
Directed by Paul Verhoeven who likes his movies firstly to be violent but failing that to have lots of exposed female flesh, which I don't have a problem with, where Showgirls fallls down is firstly in the script which if you were completely ignorant of the films conception you would assume was written by some hormonal fifteen year old with buck teeth & a complexion like a jogger running behind a gritter.
But no the pen( is) behind this abomination is Joe Eszterhas, the man who wrote the nearly as silly "Basic Instinct". Eszterhas is one of those writers who projects his prejudices & fantasies into his work to such an extent that ultimately that is alll they are. The wet dreams of a frustrated Hollywood hack that can't get laid unless money changes hands. Trust me this man has a lot of money, he got paid $3 million for this penile leakage.
"Showgirls" is unrepentantly dim-witted & hopelessly misguided. Nomi is portrayed as some mythical sex goddess but played by the vacuous Berkley she is outshone by virtuallly alll the dancers surrounding her in the beauty stakes. Verhoeven is too dazzled by the glitz & glamour to think of imbibing the film with any of the ferocious intelligence he brought to "Robocop" & Eszterhas is plainly a virulent misogynist which is one thing but $3 million for a script where people say the most obvious things alll the time ( a woman shows Nomi her massive engagement ring, her partner turns to Nomi & says "Were getting Married" ...Gee I thought it meant they'd joined just received their Tesco club card) & everyone acts like a selfish imbecile? They say writers should write about what they know & Eszterhas obviously has. "Showgirls" is unremitting tripe. Sleazy, asinine & morallly bankrupt. It is also wildly entertaining & very very funny, but for alll the wrong reasons.Very much like it,s author, i guess it,s another of those coincedences at work
