There are bad movies. There are so bad they’re good movies. And then there’s Showgirls, which doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a category. It’s a cinematic faceplant in stilettos, a neon-lit fever dream where subtlety goes to die and satire is mistaken for softcore. Directed by Paul Verhoeven—who once gave us the genius of Robocop and Total Recall—Showgirls is the equivalent of watching someone throw a bunch of glitter, cocaine, and broken dreams into a blender and calling it “art.”
The Plot (If You Can Call It That)
Our heroine—using the term loosely—is Nomi Malone (played by Elizabeth Berkley, trying desperately to shed her Saved by the Bell innocence by shedding everything else), a drifter who arrives in Las Vegas with a suitcase, a switchblade, and enough emotional volatility to scare off a pack of angry wolverines. Within hours, she’s been robbed, had a temper tantrum in traffic, and befriended a fashion student who gives her a place to live, because that’s just how Vegas works in this universe.
Nomi claws her way up from a stripper at Cheetah’s to the topless revue “Goddess” at the Stardust, all while delivering lines with the emotional range of a feral cat. She kicks, she screams, she lap dances like she’s trying to put out a grease fire with her pelvis. And eventually, she finds herself entangled in a plot so full of clichés it feels like someone tried to write All About Eve while blackout drunk on Jägermeister.
Acting So Bad It Should Be Illegal
Let’s not sugarcoat it: Elizabeth Berkley acts like someone auditioning for a high school production of Flashdance on bath salts. Every line is screamed. Every gesture is a flailing, twitchy mess. She doesn’t walk; she stomps like Godzilla in platforms. Her performance is what you’d get if you gave a caffeine-addicted mime a speaking role.
Kyle MacLachlan—poor, sweet Kyle—plays Zack Carey, the casino’s entertainment director and Nomi’s romantic interest (for about 15 seconds). He delivers his lines with all the enthusiasm of someone waiting in line at the DMV, and his infamous sex scene in the pool is less erotic and more like watching someone get electrocuted in a hot tub. Seriously, did someone explain human anatomy to these people using a Venn diagram and a dare?
Gina Gershon as Cristal Connors is the only one who seems to understand the assignment. She knows the movie is trash, so she chews scenery like it’s the lunch buffet at Circus Circus. She purrs, sneers, and struts her way through every scene like a cat who just knocked a vase off the shelf and dares you to clean it up.
The Dialogue: Written by Aliens?
The screenplay, by Joe Eszterhas, is infamous—and rightfully so. It’s as if someone heard humans talking once, jotted down the gist, and filled in the rest with crude metaphors and words pulled from a 1990s erotic thriller Mad Libs.
Examples? Oh, we’ve got them.
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“I’m not a whore. I’m a dancer.” (Spoken during a lap dance. Irony just died.)
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“Must be weird, not having anybody come on you.” (Ah yes, Shakespeare weeps.)
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“It’s like she’s dancing with her fists.” (Yes, in a war against rhythm and grace.)
This isn’t dialogue. It’s a felony against screenwriting.
Direction: Verhoeven, Are You Okay?
Paul Verhoeven, known for subversive satire and bold filmmaking, somehow turned Showgirls into a flaming carousel of missed opportunity. Was this supposed to be a biting commentary on the commodification of women in entertainment? If so, the message got lost somewhere between the pole dancing and Berkley’s spastic tantrums.
Instead of satire, we get exploitation dressed up in rhinestones. Instead of insight, we get lingering shots of breasts and overwrought melodrama. It’s like someone tried to remake Basic Instinct with no instincts whatsoever.
Verhoeven himself later apologized for the film. And when a director apologizes for his work, that’s not a red flag—that’s a flare gun shot into a dumpster fire.
Sex Scenes: What Even Are These?
The sex scenes in Showgirls are not sexy. They are surreal interpretive dances that suggest the creators have only a vague understanding of how human beings interact. The pool sex scene? It looks like a dolphin having a seizure. There’s splashing, thrashing, and the distinct possibility of a neck injury. It’s erotica by way of Cirque du Soleil, but without the talent or insurance coverage.
Even the lap dances are weirdly aggressive. Nomi grinds on MacLachlan like she’s punishing him for unpaid child support. It’s less “sensual seduction” and more “vehicular manslaughter with genitals.”
Missed Opportunities and Trashy Legacy
Here’s the real tragedy: Showgirls could have been good. With Verhoeven’s eye for subversion and Vegas as a setting rich with moral decay, there was potential here for a sharp, biting critique of fame, power, and the objectification of women. Instead, we get a slow-motion disaster full of confused tones, bad acting, and enough nudity to make Cinemax After Darkblush.
It’s like someone gave a 13-year-old boy $40 million and told him to make a movie about Vegas strippers without explaining irony, tone, or restraint.
Yet Showgirls has, bizarrely, become a cult classic. People host midnight screenings. There are drinking games. Drag queens reenact scenes on stage. It’s been reclaimed—not because it’s good, but because it’s so bad, so completely unaware of its own absurdity, that it crosses into performance art.
It’s The Room with glitter. A movie so earnest in its awfulness that it can’t help but charm you—like a drunk friend trying to do karaoke and failing spectacularly but with heart.
Final Verdict
Showgirls is cinematic junk food—greasy, regrettable, and kind of nauseating. But you might find yourself watching it anyway, if only to marvel at how many poor decisions can be crammed into a single movie.
Rating: 1 out of 5 flaming feather boas
Bonus point for Gina Gershon’s sass and the sheer spectacle of watching Elizabeth Berkley go full psycho-strut in the name of art.
If you’ve ever wondered what Glitter would look like with more nudity, worse acting, and a script written in crayon, Showgirls is your answer.
Just… bring a helmet. You might pull a muscle from all the eye-rolling.
