Review: Showgirls "Sinsational" Edition is (Mostly) a Missed Opportunity

I live in Seattle, and for years now, I've been hearing about the hilarious screenings by a local writer, David Schmader of the 1995 movie Showgirls — long considered one of the worst movies of all time. Schmader famously claims, "Each and every one of those people involved in making this movie is making the worst possible decision at every possible moment."

In short, Schmader says, the movie's awful-ness is so completely perfect that it actually raises the movie to a level of something approximating art.

The movie, the first and only NC-17 film to get a wide release, was, of course, an infamous critical and financial bomb. But the studio behind the film had the last laugh when it become a major cult classic at midnight screenings (like Schmader's) and on VHS and DVD.

People were watching the film to laugh at it, but still.

As a result, when putting together the new Showgirls 15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition (which includes both DVD and Blu-ray disks), the studio decided to embrace the film's reputation for being "so bad it's good." They included self-mocking features like a trivia track and real-life lap-dancers giving a video tutorial, and they even called in David Schmader himself to do his famous commentary as an audio track (Schmader originally thought he was getting a "cease-and-desist" call!).

Alas, the resulting project is mostly a disappointment. When you consider the possibilities of a movie studio openly embracing a film's horrible reputation, there is so much more they could've done. I understand why none of the talent was involved, but — no offense to Schmader — the producers of this DVD release were clearly working on the cheap.

Even Schmader's famous commentary is a tad disappointing.

It's true, most of his actual observations are pretty spot-on, including his one caveat to the "everyone was making the worst possible decision at every single point" theory: Gina Gershon, he says, is the one person involved who seems to know exactly what kind of movie she's in, and plays it as full-on camp. As such, she is the one person who emerged from the film unscathed (and whose career was not ultimately destroyed by it).

Schmader, who is gay, also yearns at one point for a similar Hollywood movie about male strippers featuring all the same full-frontal nudity, preferably one starring Elizabeth Berkley's Saved by the Bell co-star Mario Lopez — a project that I too would heartily endorse.

Another of Schmader's reoccurring (and accurate) observations is that the makers of this movie never seem to have met an actual woman: here when women are alone, they are invariably naked, eating chips, and talking about their breasts.

But how did everyone (except for Gina Gershon) make exactly the wrong artistic choice at every moment? I really wanted to know.

And a lot of Schmader's commentary is along the lines of "Give that woman an Oscar!" and "Zing!" whenever anyone says anything particularly campy. Schmader is more interesting than many DVD commentary tracks, but he didn't quite live up to his legendary reputation — bolstered, no doubt, by the energy of the live audiences at the screenings.

The package also includes a "making of" featurette (which wouldn't play on my machine).

Bottom line? Showgirls easily maintains its reputation as one of the most hilariously bad movies of all time, but this new edition doesn't offer much that's new (except sharper, clearer naked breasts in Blu-ray — probably not a huge draw for most gay male viewers). 

Schmader's commentary is amusing, but Netflix it, don't buy.