Showgirls (1995)

(On TV, September 1998) This film doesn’t live up to its reputation of “the worst big-budget movie of 1995” mostly because, frankly, it’s not that bad. Granted, you would have a hard time convincing anyone given the fact that most of the film’s running time features half-naked women. What else do you expect from the story of a Las Vegas stripper? Still, it’s an okay story with a few interesting scenes. The characters are lousy and unsympathetic, the dialogue is laughably bad, the plotting is uneven and the action grinds to a halt whenever director Verhoeven wants to put up a nekkid boobs show, but it’s far from being a complete Z-grade mess of a movie. Anyone wishing for good porn, however, better look elsewhere: For all the nudity and suggestive dancing, Showgirls remains a curiously un-sexy movie. Blame it on nipple overload.