Showgirls (1995)
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)
Cast and Information
Directed By: Paul Verhoeven
Written By: Joe Eszterhas
Starring: Robert Davi, Gina Gershon, Kyle MacLachlan, Glenn Plummer, Elizabeth Berkley, Rena Riffel, Alan Rachins, Al Ruscio, Gina Ravera, Greg Travis, Patrick Bristow, Lin Tucci
Genre: Drama
Where to Stream
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Showgirls belongs to 61 collections
1. Favorite Film of Every Criticker Member (collaborative: moderated by PeaceAnarchy - 95 stars)
2. boobs (collaborative: moderated by Pickpocket - 51 stars)
3. Passed the Bechdel Test (collaborative: moderated by geohawk - 29 stars)
4. Onion AV Club: The New Cult Canon (collaborative: moderated by theficionado - 28 stars)
5. Full Female Frontal Nudity (Yes, Bush!) (collaborative: moderated by iceblox - 26 stars)
6. Female protagonist (collaborative: moderated by djross - 25 stars)
7. Slant Magazine's 100 Essential Films (collaborative: moderated by nexus - 14 stars)
8. Films available in HD (collaborative: moderated by kubricksucks - 13 stars)
9. Rape (collaborative: moderated by Moribunny - 7 stars)
10. Cult Classics (collaborative: moderated by Jellysauce - 5 stars)
11. Ambiguously Gay/Lesbian Films (collaborative: moderated by bobyang - 5 stars)
12. Filmsite.org - Sex in the Movies, An Illustrated History (collaborative: moderated by afx237vi - 5 stars)
13. Top 3000 movies with the most votes on IMDb (public: fanfic - 5 stars)
14. Twin Films (collaborative: moderated by amazedemon - 4 stars)
15. Gang Rape (collaborative: moderated by iceblox - 3 stars)
16. Wikipedia's List of Films Considered the Worst (collaborative: moderated by Svengali - 3 stars)
17. Slant Magazine's 100 Best Movies of the 1990s (collaborative: moderated by edsu - 3 stars)
18. Siskel and Ebert Worst (public: donkeyjelly - 3 stars)
19. Imdb Bottom 100 (collaborative - 2 stars)
20. Sexploitation (collaborative: moderated by driscarpin - 2 stars)
21. Naked Female Dancing (collaborative - 2 stars)
22. Movies that were so bad they were hilarious (collaborative: moderated by letskillrobots - 2 stars)
23. Satire of Hollywood (collaborative: moderated by Ag0stoMesmer - 2 stars)
24. Hate it or love it (collaborative: moderated by comepelicula - 2 stars)
25. Cinema Sins (collaborative: moderated by Phantom Nook - 2 stars)
26. Djross underrated movies (public: djross - 2 stars)
27. The Official Razzie Movie Guide: Enjoying the Best of Hollywood's Worst (public: teckgecko - 2 stars)
28. Las Vegas (collaborative: moderated by djross - 1 star)
29. Razzies: Worst Picture (collaborative: moderated by Zarkon - 1 star)
30. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst Screenplay (collaborative - 1 star)
31. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst Original Song (collaborative - 1 star)
32. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst New Star (collaborative - 1 star)
33. Naked Female Swimming (collaborative - 1 star)
34. Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture (collaborative: moderated by hristos - 1 star)
35. NC-17 (collaborative: moderated by Pickpocket - 1 star)
36. Netflix instant LATAM (collaborative: moderated by Roman_Herbom - 1 star)
37. Djross movies that risk being kitschy (public: djross - 1 star)
38. Masoud Archive (public: Masoud569 - 1 star)
39. Blank Check with Griffin & David (public: TychoCelchuu - 1 star)
40. Camp (collaborative)
41. Golden Raspberry Award (collaborative: moderated by Pickpocket)
42. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst Actress (collaborative)
43. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst Screen Couple (collaborative)
44. Golden Raspberry Award: Worst Director (collaborative)
45. Female Dancing (Without Nudity) (collaborative)
46. Midnites @ The Coolidge (collaborative: moderated by TrixRabbi)
47. Strippers (collaborative: moderated by td888)
48. Mind blowing collection (collaborative: moderated by hakkanarejo)
49. Ratings (collaborative: moderated by cheapthrills)
50. 1995 Wide Releases U.S. (collaborative: moderated by Roman_Herbom)
51. Carolco Pictures (collaborative: moderated by elhenzo)
52. One Word Titled Films (collaborative: moderated by Dunstan-xxx)
53. 1995: Year in Review (public: polanski28)
54. AgostoMesmer thinks this is underrated (public: Ag0stoMesmer)
55. karamazov's dvd/vhs collection. (public: karamazov.)
56. Eric's Bad Movies (public: BeeDub)
57. Hollywood Saloon: Guilty Pleasures (public: BeeDub)
58. Tom's Movies (public: tomwalsh)
59. Półka (public: msa)
60. Misty Bisty (public: Russ Bedford)
61. seen in 2021 (public: sproost)
Browse the full list of collections
| Stars | User | Rating | |
| 12 |  |
mattburgess | 100 99th |
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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.
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| 10 |  |
CCLZA | 80 77th |
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Tacky, disgusting, unintentionally funny, full of quotes, overacted. In other words: a Classic.
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| 10 |  |
Mentaculus | 96 96th |
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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.
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| 7 |  |
djross | 60 62nd |
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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?
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| 7 |  |
DougReese | 100 96th |
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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.
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| 6 |  |
angrypierre | 0 0th |
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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.
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| 5 |  |
backwardsuit | 64 31st |
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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.
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| 4 |  |
Pickpocket | 6 55th |
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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.
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| 4 |  |
paulofilmo | 71 69th |
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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.
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| 3 |  |
eveelun | 24 2nd |
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Laughably bad, but at the same time you feel kind of dirty watching it. Jesse Spano, what were you thinking?
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| 3 |  |
PirateJason | 25 0th |
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At least there was lots of nudity.
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| 3 |  |
twincinema | 100 99th |
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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.
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| 3 |  |
AFlickering | 5 75th |
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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.
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| 3 |  |
Boobjuice | 25 27th |
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The film that inspired me to become a Vegas showgirl. Truly life-changing, and hilarious in the most depressing of ways.
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| 3 |  |
recklessmess | 0 0th |
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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...
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| 3 |  |
BillyShears | 95 96th |
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You can set your watch to Elizabeth Berkley grossly over exaggerating an emotion every 5 minutes on screen.
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| 3 |  |
luc | 70 70th |
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Not bad. The story was not so good but I like the topless
dancing-scenes.
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| 3 |  |
Ocelot | 50 40th |
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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.
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| 3 |  |
Yiannos | 75 84th |
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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.
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| 2 |  |
doctor7 | 20 11th |
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Just get some porn, at least it's honest about it's selling point.
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| 2 |  |
bojanpopic | 22 6th |
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Movie that tryed to "shock" you, but at the end, you are shocked how bad it was.
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| 2 | badfishstan | 14 1st |
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Showgirls - nudity = 0 rating
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| 2 | Orion2221 | 50 1st |
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Either the worst movie ever or brilliant satire. I can't tell, hence the 50.
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| 2 |  |
Spunkie | 69 80th |
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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.
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| 2 |  |
purgatos | 14 3rd |
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I haven't seen all of this movie, but I've seen enough.
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| 2 |  |
Judge Holden | 1 4th |
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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.
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| 2 |  |
Bunken | 40 25th |
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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?
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| 2 |  |
dardan | 65 64th |
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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.
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| 2 |  |
JPFerguson | 65 63rd |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
DavidKahane | 50 32nd |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
Actionberg | 20 2nd |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
TheDenizen | 15 4th |
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Not really even entertaining as trash, despite the continuous nudity.
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| 1 |  |
kranksta | 20 3rd |
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Horrid movie, made me shy away from boobs for almost a week!
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| 1 |  |
Mento | 15 0th |
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Where is the MST3k crew when they are sorely needed?
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| 1 | HunterKing | 93 95th |
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Verhoeven's style at it's most fast-paced and absurd. You'll never see anything like it
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| 1 |  |
PeaceAnarchy | 69 23rd |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
Potzblitz | 27 1st |
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At least "Striptease" had Burt Reynolds rubbing baby oil all over himself... Where were I? Oh yeah, this movie sucks.
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| 1 | jonquill | 47 4th |
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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!
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| 1 |  |
ofallpieces | 19 1st |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
batface89 | 59 9th |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
lauratron | 90 92nd |
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A difficult one to rate (like Troll 2) as it's a very guilty pleasure!
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| 1 | Chouinard | 88 91st |
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one of my guilty pleasure cult classic faves
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| 1 |  |
AshWilliams | 53 5th |
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While sorta intriguing in spots, sorta TERRIBLE overall.
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| 1 |  |
UniqueName | 30 4th |
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A piece of crap, but its got bewbs!
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| 1 |  |
Cronan | 55 3rd |
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50 of these points are for the nudity though, so be warned.
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| 1 |  |
begoniabol | 12 15th |
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Suffocated by the amount of boobs. Had to giggle a few times though
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| 1 |  |
oldgoat | 37 6th |
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If there wasn't tits, this movie would be about a 5
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| 1 | lostinlodos | 90 90th |
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90 for the original
94 for the extended "director's cut"
98 for the uncut complete edition
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| 1 |  |
whitejeft | 100 99th |
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Holy fuck, this IS a masterpiece.
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| 1 |  |
karamazov. | 96 99th |
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Paul Verhoeven is a hero of cinema.
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| 1 |  |
lisa- | 8 97th |
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in the age of empowerment, this was fucking exhilarating.
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| 1 |  |
KenMeisters | 72 64th |
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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.
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| 1 |  |
peyrin | 75 69th |
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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.
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| Average Percentile 23.71% from 3465 Ratings |  |