Mark Reviews Movies: YOU DON'T NOMI

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 8, 2020

Even those who champion Showgirls admit that it's a bad movie. It is, at least from this critic's perspective, and when it comes to opinion and critical analysis, perspective is the cornerstone. There are a lot of perspectives on display in You Don't Nomi, a re-evaluation of director Paul Verhoeven's infamous box-office and critical bomb from 1995.

If you have never seen or don't remember Showgirls, it's worth catching up with or re-visiting, if only because it's essential in order to view this documentary. As bad as that movie may be, director Jeffrey McHale's thorough and thoughtful re-assessment of it makes the experience of enduring or tolerating or laughing at or maybe even—with an acceptance of the movie's various and varied perplexing elements—enjoying Showgirls worthwhile.

The foundation of McHale's film is Adam Nayman's 2014 book It Doesn't Suck: Showgirls (Depending on one's inflection, you can read the title as a vigorous defense or a shrug of one). Nayman, whose voice and arguments appear repeatedly throughout the documentary, makes a pretty straightforward case that the 1995 movie has value (McHale evades talking-head interviews, instead using footage from the movie, archival material, and clips from Verhoeven's filmography—sometimes cleverly edited to include scenes from Showgirls). The documentary leans that way, too, although McHale clearly isn't as willing as Nayman to declare a great, if severely flawed, movie.

There's a certain, unexpected tension here—not in terms of suspense or discomfort but in the way that the filmmaker allows assorted reactions to Showgirls play off of and comment upon each other. Nayman is steadfast, seeing the history of the response to the movie in three stages: "Piece of S---," "Masterpiece," and "Master Piece of S---." The first stage came immediately upon the movie's release. It was ripped apart by critics and audiences alike. Well, the concept of "audiences" in relation to Showgirls comes with a caveat: The movie, with a production budget of over $40 million, barely made half of that rounded-down figure. An NC-17 rating from the MPAA didn't help the receipts, but obtaining that rating was one of Verhoeven's stated goals.

McHale dives into the initial reviews from critics, which ranged from bored dismissal to comically dismissive excoriation. Nayman makes a couple of sound arguments in his response to those critics. First, there's the point that negative reviews often read/sound more like a stand-up comedian's tight five than actual analysis (I'd argue that's partially true—enough so that we have a whole subsection of film "criticism" that's mostly about trying to be funny, sacrificing or overly simplifying the analysis in the process). Second, some of those reviews went too far in their dismissal, saying that Showgirls is shoddy in terms of production. It's certainly shoddy in a multitude of ways, but that's not one of them.

The tension of competing thought here comes early, as Nayman makes the case that Verhoeven intentional use of different visual motifs and symbolism means that the movie is much deeper than those early reviews argued. He hones in on mirrors specifically. As McHale offers plenty of clips in which mirrors are prominently featured, one might think that the point is a reach.

Around that point, we hear a new voice, another critic, who counters Nayman's argument: The presence of mirrors in a movie about Las Vegas showgirls, who are often seen in dressing rooms where mirrors are just part of the scene, doesn't intrinsically denote some deeper meaning to the movie. Just as a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, sometimes a mirror is just a necessary piece of set dressing.

It's an important and defining moment in and for the film. McHale's purpose isn't to extol the possible virtues of Showgirls or to condemn the movie as a complete failure. It's not to provide a single voice on one side or the other. There's an actual discussion occurring in this film—between intelligent people with distinct opinions, within each interviewee as he or she attempts to weigh the actual content of the movie at hand against his or her personal opinion of it, across Verhoeven's filmography as McHale finds re-occurring images and ideas throughout the director's decades of making movies.

In a strange way, the documentary isn't just an act of film criticism. It comes close to reflecting the way that critics assess the elements of a movie, find its meaning or purpose within the elements of narrative and form, and arrive at some adjudication of its merits or flaws.

There's a breadth of analysis here that might seem surprising given the subject. The voices dissect certain scenes (Picking apart the scene in which two characters find a common bond in liking the taste of dog food is especially amusing) or running ideas. They approach how the movie has found new life as a cult item, spawning midnight screenings and an off-Broadway musical (The show's star explains how the experience of performing in it helped her come to terms with trauma, pointedly serving as a counterpoint to one critic's argument that the story's sudden turn into a revenge tale undermines the impact of sexual violence). They go through the way that Verhoeven himself has changed his story about his intentions in making the movie (going from creating a serious and thoughtful drama to knowing that he was making trash), as well as how the movie affected the life and career of star Elizabeth Berkley.

Will any of this change anyone's mind about Showgirls? It probably won't, but like all good criticism, You Don't Nomi certainly helps one solidify his or her thoughts about a movie and makes you think about a movie in ways you otherwise might not have.

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