Showgirls: Camp Classic or Complete Crap? (1 Viewer)

[David Rogers]

Camp. They were going for serious, but failed so very very badly, and that makes it camp.

I've had some run-ins with folks over the years who aren't so into this movie; relax. It's so bad, it's good. Invite a few friends over, have some drinks, then start it up and talk over it. Pause every now and again to chuckle and boggle, and otherwise just ignore. Camptastic is certainly the right word.

 

[Todd H]

Never seen it, but damn if you guys aren't convincing me to rent it just to see how bad it is.

 

[Kain_C]

I think David R. has the best grasp of how to handle the movie. I think 'drinks' is the key word though.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Umm, well, in engineering ethics and/or philosophy courses that are typically required in your senior year even for electrical engineers its pretty common to study the KC hotel disasters, the Tacoma Pass bridge (if I remember correctly - the famous one that resonance caused to swing wildly) and the O-ring failure on the space shuttle.

Suffice to say that in no way were they expecting us to replicate those moments of brilliance.

Showgirls is one of the worst train wrecks ever. It's not camp because it really doesn't even fail in a consistant way. First of all, they clearly are serious. PV was trying to make a hard hitting behind-the-scenes film in line with all of his other work. He has always gone for amped up sex and violence and it wasn't camp when it worked.

But then the writing is in almost perfect disagreement with this seriousness. It's not that it's goofy like camp films, but rather that its stuff that a dork would think sounds cooler than it really does.

Add to this some bad acting or in other cases actors totally uninspired by the script and you get a delivery of terrible dialog with no real effort, yet shot with all the skill and impact of having real meaning. At least Ed Wood's production matched well with all the other amateurish efforts in the film.

PV makes Showgirls one of his better looking, slickly shot films.

It also doesn't help that the plot itself deals with some very unpleasant situations, true to life or not, that undermine any sort of camp feel-good that the crap of the film might produce.

Verhoeven kept pushing his boundries and just went right on over the edge into shit with Showgirls in some attempt to outdo Basic Instinct. BI avoided the problem by having some well written scenes, even if they were very H'wood and artificial. There were good beats in that script.

He pulled it back enough and focused for STroop but then slipped back with Hollow Man. He is always going to be a director that needs to have just the right balance in his scripts to avoid coming off as crap.

He is especially susceptable to going too far with the violence and darkness because his style often comes off as too breezy and callous to believe he really respects the victims in his films. It ends up playing as mean-spirited instead. That really hurts the camp view with him.

 

[Quentin]

Flashdance isn't high camp? Didn't Eszterhas just take his old Flashdance script, change the names, and add a lot of nudity and sex to come up with Showgirls?

 

[Don Solosan]

Did I read this right? Paul Verhoeven and serious cinema in the same sentence? In reference to Showgirls???

Paul Verhoeven is the European Russ Meyer. There is nothing serious about his movies. Sometimes they are earnest, but never "serious."

 

[kerrySan]

camp classic. i feel no need to explain this as it has senimental value.

 

[Richard Meadows]

I dug it but I dig Gina Gershon.

Wasn't the greatest film or anything but I enjoy a good T&A fest and it did deliver.

 

[Artur Meinild]

Are YOU serious? It's Verhoeven, so don't count on it... Berkley = HOT, Gershon = HOT, actually I'm watching it right now...

 

[Joe D]

I guess you've never watched the great World War II film Soldier of Orange made by Paul.