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Showgirls

Showgirls

1995
Drama
2h 8m
Seduction, passion and power struggles unfold as the creators of "Basic Instinct" blow the lid off the seemingly glamorous world of Las Vegas showdancing in this controversial film that stars Elizabeth Berkley. (MGM)
Your probable score
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Showgirls

1995
Drama
2h 8m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 24.26% from 3538 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(3538)
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Rated 12 Aug 2008
100
99th
This lovingly ridiculous yet sincere trash satire is a glorious and jaw dropping "fuck you" to empty Hollywood films, placing all that is low brow on an huge glittery pedestal with eye popping colour and performances (especially from a deadpan Elizabeth Berkley who tears through the film like a wild animal in true Russ Meyer fashion). If you can't enjoy this film on any level that you must be one of the most boring people alive. Nomi Malone = GOD.
Rated 20 May 2019
96
96th
Verhoeven pulled off a fucking coup, here, didn't he? Showgirls combines the myth-making Americana pomp of Busby Berkeley, and the subversive, knowing sex games of Russ Meyer, but then it took all of Bob Fosse's quaaludes and had a seizure going down on a hooker in a Vegas back room. Its Tits-and-Ass-and-Overacting glam is a smokescreen obscuring the truth of the musical mythos: Every kind act is shit on and every little shit gets ahead. It's neither serious nor a satire - it's a statement.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
80
77th
Tacky, disgusting, unintentionally funny, full of quotes, overacted. In other words: a Classic.
Rated 08 Sep 2009
100
96th
The best melodramatic trash post-Douglas Sirk, "Showgirls" is a manically funny, sometimes disturbingly stressful, and highly original work of genius, fueled with satire-satirizing-satire that boosts an energy unlike any other film I've seen. It works as a bad movie, when the brain isn't functioning. It works as brilliant craft, when the brain is up and moving. "Showgirls" is a colorful and intelligent (maybe a bit too intelligent) examination of psychosexual American hypocrisy.
Rated 10 Mar 2014
60
62nd
Less satire than hyper-melodrama, this film has great energy and takes big chances. As a result, some scenes inevitably don't work, but it seems likely that the film's failure was due to more than just its general misanthropy (represented by Las Vegas, land of assholes), and more than just resentment at the fact the writer was paid $2 million for a back-of-a-napkin screenplay. Could it be that what frightens audiences and critics alike is still anything like a close-up look at female sexuality?
Rated 14 Aug 2007
0
0th
Words can scarcely express just how distressingly bad this movie is. I would rather pull my liver out of my nose with a pencil than subject myself to it's utter vacuous nonsense again.
Rated 17 Sep 2018
64
31st
Very provocative satire but the problem for me is that it switches tone so much that it kinda becomes a satire on its own satire if that makes any sense. I certainly can't recall a film I've seen with more passive aggressive mockery towards everything about its subject. So that's something at least. Just seething with vindictive rage & gets more than a little carried away with it, losing the consistency of its ideas. Still Verhoeven has the ability to repeatedly floor me with his outrageousness.
Rated 04 May 2012
6
55th
Starts out very promising with potential to be one of the best so bad its good movies but deteriorates into just a movie you can get drunk to and laugh at. Everyone is trying SO hard in this film, it's great. Especially Elizabeth Berkley who is desperate to be considered a serious actress (definition of a butterface though. oh, and can't act). Basically a softcore porno with a better storyline. Ending doesn't make any sense.
Rated 08 Jun 2010
95
96th
You can set your watch to Elizabeth Berkley grossly over exaggerating an emotion every 5 minutes on screen.
Rated 13 Sep 2019
71
69th
i mean, it's really adorable. so far, if i'm to go into battle, i'd like snake plissken and nomi malone by my side.
Rated 22 Nov 2006
25
0th
At least there was lots of nudity.
Rated 03 Feb 2015
100
98th
The perfect film! A camp classic played straight that has had audiences and critics flummoxed with how to take the film. The film takes place in an alternate reality, and it's equal parts ridiculous and interesting, a tightrope act that a number of films fail.
Rated 21 Jul 2007
25
27th
The film that inspired me to become a Vegas showgirl. Truly life-changing, and hilarious in the most depressing of ways.
Rated 14 Mar 2014
50
40th
This might be the most baffling movie I've ever seen. Elizabeth Berkley gives either the best performance in film history or the worst. I have no idea if it's successful satire or pure trash. Neither? Both? It's the most enigmatic nonsense I've seen since... I don't even know. It's somewhere between 0 and 100, so I'll average it. I'd give it a question mark if I could.
Rated 10 May 2009
70
70th
Not bad. The story was not so good but I like the topless dancing-scenes.
Rated 27 Feb 2007
24
2nd
Laughably bad, but at the same time you feel kind of dirty watching it. Jesse Spano, what were you thinking?
Rated 11 Feb 2008
0
0th
To say that I watched this movie is a bit of an overstatement. I tuned into HBO during some underwater sex scene and realized that Berkley probably reached her acting pinnacle at Bayside High...
Rated 04 Jul 2016
5
73rd
maybe this says more about me than the respective movies, but whereas i felt above the scope of SUCKER PUNCH's feminist indictment, there was no escaping this. if the mark of a great satire is that it sells you the narrative it's spinning while simultaneously spearing you for buying, SHOWGIRLS is GREAT satire. it's physically impossible to resist the immaculately choreographed, righteous sensory overload with which the story's told, and impossible not to feel uncomfortable about that complicity.
Rated 29 Oct 2017
75
84th
Showgirls is the cinematic equivalent of a colourful candy coated cyanide pill: it's superficially pleasing but rotten to its core, and it's the perfect aesthetic match for Verhoeven's absurdly hyperbolic vision of contemporary decadence marked by pornographic excess and ruthless ambition. Disregard the noise of the irony brigade: Showgirls is aggressively energetic cinema made by a gonzo master, and it's best appreciated as a sleazy melodramatic 'musical' shot with garish elegance.
Rated 24 Feb 2008
22
6th
Movie that tryed to "shock" you, but at the end, you are shocked how bad it was.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
14
1st
Showgirls - nudity = 0 rating
Rated 12 Mar 2011
40
25th
Wonder why ive seen this so many times? My best guess is, Im a dude and it has tits and ass... A lot of it and nothing else... Seems like PV have wrapped a horrible story around it just to justify the tits' and asses... Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, in porno! So why do I give it such a "good" score? Dude, havent you read the review?
Rated 14 Aug 2007
20
11th
Just get some porn, at least it's honest about it's selling point.
Rated 01 Dec 2008
69
81st
A good way to end a day filled with Looney Tunes, so I didn't even need a mind shift. Like those cartoons things happen out of nowhere. It can't even be defended like Verhoeven's really misunderstood satire Starship Troopers. Anyway letting go to the idiocrasy you may easily derive some fun over this. No other movie deserved a "69" more.
Rated 04 Mar 2016
65
64th
Bunuellian vision on and satirization of showbiz: the objectification and liberation of women, as a parralel to Bergmans dialectical approach in Persona. Very crude, though. Truly controversial and upsetting would have been to enlist b-list women and a-list men, in a 'Close-up' effort, and to add some reality to the film.
Rated 01 Aug 2009
1
4th
Elizabeth Berkeley. Did you know that Berkeley (the school) was named after George Berkeley (the philosopher)? Did you also happen to know that it's pronounced BARK-li not Berk-ley? I had a philosophy teacher who would flip the fuck out about that. He brought it up every class. There, I just wrestled a philosophical discussion out of a movie about strippers. I think that speaks volumes about my social skills.
Rated 27 Jun 2008
14
3rd
I haven't seen all of this movie, but I've seen enough.
Rated 08 Apr 2021
65
64th
It seems to me that this film is better viewed, and thus more fully appreciated, after first watching Wiseman's 'Crazy Horse'. What Verhoeven presents to us here is not just a collection of images, sounds, music and people acting, but a 'feeling'. More specifically a quality of airiness mixed with danger. A heady film for sure, but not titillating. It's deserving of more than ironic love from cinephiles.
Rated 25 Jan 2011
69
23rd
Despite its reputation as a bad film it's not so much bad as underwhelming and severely flawed. It takes itself too seriously to be good satire but is too ridiculous to take at face value. Even so, there's some interesting stuff from time to time and despite many problems it's competent enough to be watchable.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
15
4th
Not really even entertaining as trash, despite the continuous nudity.
Rated 05 Jun 2008
19
1st
This could have been a lot more interesting, a lot more carefully directed, as it were this film is targetted to a sexual audience instead of an audience that would appreciate the trial and error in this harsh business. That formal review out of the way, I would never see this film again. Ever. I think it should become a trial of adulthood. People 17 should be forced to sit through this movie to become an adult. RIGHT OF PASSAGE... surviving this awful film.
Rated 07 Aug 2008
88
91st
one of my guilty pleasure cult classic faves
Rated 03 Aug 2008
90
92nd
A difficult one to rate (like Troll 2) as it's a very guilty pleasure!
Rated 03 Dec 2008
55
3rd
50 of these points are for the nudity though, so be warned.
Rated 04 Oct 2008
53
5th
While sorta intriguing in spots, sorta TERRIBLE overall.
Rated 01 Aug 2009
37
6th
If there wasn't tits, this movie would be about a 5
Rated 12 Sep 2007
47
4th
I'm not a stripper, I'm a dancer! Who happens to be wearing only a G-string. Here! Here! Watch me Dance! I'M SO EXCITED! I'M SO EXCITED!
Rated 31 Jan 2015
8
97th
in the age of empowerment, this was fucking exhilarating.
Rated 05 Jan 2007
20
2nd
You'd think that one couldn't screw up a movie involving a woman who's naked all the time, gyrating her pelvis left and right. Somehow, they found a way.
Rated 15 Oct 2009
90
90th
90 for the original 94 for the extended "director's cut" 98 for the uncut complete edition
Rated 05 Nov 2007
93
95th
Verhoeven's style at it's most fast-paced and absurd. You'll never see anything like it
Rated 28 Feb 2010
12
15th
Suffocated by the amount of boobs. Had to giggle a few times though
Rated 18 Dec 2008
30
4th
A piece of crap, but its got bewbs!
Rated 20 Apr 2007
20
3rd
Horrid movie, made me shy away from boobs for almost a week!
Rated 14 Aug 2007
27
1st
At least "Striptease" had Burt Reynolds rubbing baby oil all over himself... Where were I? Oh yeah, this movie sucks.
Rated 14 Aug 2007
15
0th
Where is the MST3k crew when they are sorely needed?
Rated 09 Jun 2014
96
99th
Paul Verhoeven is a hero of cinema.
Rated 28 Jul 2008
59
9th
Terrible acting, terrible story, yet there's something appealing about the film. It's just so bad that you can't take your eyes off it, like a car accident.
Rated 28 Feb 2017
100
99th
Holy fuck, this IS a masterpiece.
Rated 15 Aug 2007
50
32nd
It mistakes raunchiness for risque sexiness, gleefully piling on lurid set pieces so that it quickly becomes wonderful unintentional comedy. Berkley's acting is really a thing to behold: wrong-footed at every emotional step. She goes from sedate to fully enraged at the drop of a G-string, and is so relentlessly physical that you expect her to play the last scene with an Olympic gold medal around her neck. The performance is brutally bad. It also inspires a weird admiration for its fearlessness.
Rated 18 Jun 2019
75
69th
90s Prince slappers, shirtless Kyle MacLachlan, consistently great camerawork, peak midnight-movie neon colors, and a deconstruction of Hollywood's love of deconstructing Vegas glamour - every minute is gloriously batshit. Along with Freddy Got Fingered, one of the modern films most desperately in need of a serious critical reevaluation.
Rated 03 Aug 2020
72
62nd
The least erotic erotic-drama is really bad, but it's also very good. Like Kyle McLachlan said: "you'll think the next scene will be better, but it just gets worse!" Which means it's great unless you were involved in it.
Rated 23 May 2009
20
12th
It is those movies where everything goes wrong in a funny way so it can be seen as an unintentional comedy.
Rated 04 Nov 2011
28
12th
"Zach, you're jumping to conclusions!" "If anything like this ever happens again, you're gonna jump to YOUR conclusion." Fer Chrissakes, Agent Cooper...
Rated 17 Apr 2008
45
30th
Showgirls is hilariously campy, at least. How can you completely hate something filled with serious, dramatically delivered lines like: 'It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you"?
Rated 04 Dec 2011
25
14th
Lame, lame, lame, not even an NC-17 rating could spark enough interest from the young male audience.
Rated 19 Feb 2014
35
1st
Impressively bad. Even knowing coming into the film what to expect it's still painfully bad to watch. Maybe one to get drunk to and laugh at how bad it is.
Rated 13 Oct 2008
40
10th
The edited version they show on VH1 is much more entertaining. The movie has no value but it's good tasteless fun.
Rated 10 Mar 2011
63
70th
ger; [Showgirls]; eine tänzerin kommt nach las vegas, versucht dort die karriereleiter emporzukommen und in einer revue aufzutreten.; (ein blick hinter die glanzvollen lichter);
Rated 12 Jan 2010
40
15th
Points: Gina Gershon
Rated 19 Aug 2010
46
18th
I gave this film a second chance after 13 years and I like it better this time around. The film thoroughly dissects the seedy, venal setting, but it has some serious pacing issues. The film doesn't need anywhere near 131 minutes to tell its story, and the episodic structure and mawkish ending only exacerbate this. The constant ambiguity in the dialogue feels annoying rather than cunning, and the tone wriggles all over the place. I still respect the extremely hard work the cast put in, though.
Rated 30 Aug 2010
75
54th
Hilarious...for about 15 minutes, then unbearably dull
Rated 25 Sep 2010
11
3rd
Hilariously awful. Spank material for many tweens in the 90's.
Rated 31 Jan 2013
36
11th
"It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you." I think Kyle McLachlan is the only winner here, getting the best view in the house during Berkleys seizure-gasm. Teeters over the edge of funny-bad but not frequently enough.
Rated 10 Oct 2013
75
38th
I mean yes it's a terrible movie but it's so damn entertaining!
Rated 01 Aug 2008
45
15th
Probably one of the 10 sexiest films I've ever watched, but... doesn't make it good.
Rated 29 Jan 2007
2
0th
How to commit career suicide with just 1 film. Staggeringly bad, to the point where you think its being done this poorly on purpose.
Rated 27 May 2014
15
4th
EVERYBODY GOT AIDS N' SHIT. Absolutely awful film, but with the right group of friends and the right amount of alcohol it can be one of the most damn entertaining pieces of film ever made.
Rated 16 Mar 2008
2
0th
Oh God, this is a piece of shit. Worth seeing, though, for Jessie Spano's titties.
Rated 24 Jan 2007
83
62nd
Only because I get to see her naked. Of course I got to in Any Given Sunday as well. What a whore.
Rated 28 May 2012
87
97th
it's so fucking awesome. the energy, the direction, the performances, the physicality...just everything. had a semi through the whole thing. well, almost. :D energy got a little weak towards the end, but still...
Rated 24 Sep 2007
1
10th
I love that this was directed by Verhoeven. He's a hard guy to pin down sometimes, ain't he?
Rated 05 Jan 2011
37
7th
Plus points for titties, choreography and the sex scene that makes it look like the main character is having a seizure fit as she orgasms. Minus points for everything else.
Rated 05 Feb 2015
68
25th
Don't quite get how this won "trainwreck" status. It's more boring than anything. Underwritten characters and it goes on much too long. However, that this didn't win every cinematography award that year is criminal, because this movie is beautiful. Some of the finest Steadicam work I've ever seen combined with neon Vegas lighting.
Rated 27 Oct 2008
10
6th
13 year old self loved this movie, not my finest hour.
Rated 20 Jul 2009
76
35th
Trashy & stupid...but you can still have some fun watching it, which is more than I can say for, say, SLIVER.
Rated 01 Feb 2011
25
3rd
I just kept thinking, "Can't be as bad as everyone says it is." Well it is.
Rated 17 Feb 2009
8
3rd
Everything you've heard about this movie is true. Enough said.
Rated 05 Mar 2011
50
6th
but very, very entertaining if watched under the right conditions (ie, intoxicated and with other people)
Rated 11 May 2014
65
54th
It's so bad it hit my scoremeter's bottom so hard it bounced back to 65.
Rated 19 Sep 2017
69
8th
How do you not give this move that score?
Rated 01 Aug 2009
30
21st
I quite like Paul Verhoeven, but a bit less after seeing this. An all round bad film, with some trash value.
Rated 23 Jul 2010
70
33rd
Am I the only person who actually liked this movie? I laughed and cried and was emotionally scarred for a week. showgirls has boobs, Las Vegas, girl on girl action, and a dancer kicking the shit of a rapist.
Rated 06 Dec 2011
2
0th
1 for gershon + 1 for "i got towels"
Rated 14 Aug 2007
30
4th
Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley hot and nekkid! Nothing else to recommend this disaster.
Rated 23 Aug 2008
5
6th
Absolutely craptastic.
Rated 11 Feb 2009
90
39th
I hate to admit this..horrible acting..cheesy script but I love this movie as a guilty pleasure
Rated 28 Aug 2007
11
1st
or 100, depending on how you watch it
Rated 07 Aug 2009
0
12th
Big-budget skinflick. Big deal. The storyline, something like a Jackie Susann or Jackie Collins novel condensed to a single thin thread, could have been completely mapped out by the scriptwriter while waiting for his sausage-and-eggs order to be filled at Denny's. The temporary layover in the strip club permits some groundbreaking, though unconvincing, big-screen documentation of the lap-dance phenomenon.
Rated 06 Aug 2010
64
15th
So bad it's spectacular.
Rated 04 Oct 2012
1
4th
This isn't the worst movie ever. Sure, this is really fucking bad, but after just watching Battlefield Earth this almost seems passable.
Rated 23 Nov 2009
10
3rd
If you want to do a film about breasts, why not just go all out and make pornography? Another Verhoeven miss. Perhaps his worst.
Rated 27 Jan 2010
40
33rd
Well... it's Verhoeven, so I can't hate it, really. Plus any sex scene where the woman acts like she's being repeatedly struck by lightning is worth 20 points.
Rated 25 Feb 2011
60
40th
the principles of showbusiness wrapped up in a trash galore softcore porn. as much as i love the idea (and tits), i felt like there was something amiss the whole time (except tits). maybe BIGGER tits? hm, saying it out loud sounds right, at least.
Rated 16 Jun 2012
78
44th
Funny
Rated 26 Mar 2008
0
3rd
Great in that uintentionally funny way.
Rated 21 Aug 2007
90
64th
Oh so bad, but such a guilty pleasure...
Rated 27 Feb 2011
25
6th
"Here, they pretend they want something else, and you still show them tits and ass."
Rated 03 Aug 2008
40
17th
Kyle MacLachlan's emo haircut FTW
Rated 09 May 2010
45
21st
Look, everyone should see this movie once, hopefully while drunk, and then never view it again. Ever.

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