BEFORE: We drove out to Long Island this past weekend so my wife could get cigarettes - and then we had a nice Chinese buffet lunch (gotta get in shape for Vegas) and did some shopping at a couple dollar stores. I saw both Halloween AND Christmas decorations for sale, so that reinforces my feeling that the rest of this year is going to fly by very fast. Look, this is movie #250 for the year, so I'm not really in the final stretch, but I'm making that turn at the far end of the track, so I can't quit now, it's time to get motivated for that last final push.
There are just 22 days until October 1, when I'll switch over to horror programming (plus animation and golf this year, but I'll explain when we get there) and 24 days until New York Comic-Con. I've cut back my days at the convention this year, and my boss has downgraded from a full booth to a table in Artists Alley, so I may only work two of the four convention days, which honestly is a relief. I'm getting too old to exhaust myself working at a geek con. Then in about 40 days I'm headed out on vacation for a week, so really, time's going to fly and this year will be nearing the end before I know it.
Thankfully all my ducks are in a row to get me to Christmas, I don't have to plan or re-plan or re-think my approach, I just need to stay on target. Alan Cumming carries over from "Always at the Carlyle", then today's film will link to my last stray documentary for 2019.
THE PLOT: A small-town girl ventures to Los Angeles and finds her place in a neo-burlesque club run by a former dancer.
AFTER: As I always say, some films are bricks and some films are mortar when I put my Movie Year together, although I often don't always know which are which until I watch them. I would love for this film to be considered a "brick", because I've heard a lot about it over the years, certainly some people seem to dig it, and thus I assigned it to a crucial mid-century position. But I'm afraid that given enough time and distance, I'm just not going to remember much about it, and it's going to be ultimately regarded as "mortar", and not just because it's serving the purpose of linking two documentaries together. (I didn't have too many choices after burning the Cher link by watching "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" earlier this year - though I suppose if I didn't use it here, I could have made it part of a Kristen Bell chain in 2020.)
I'm a big fan of the female form, so naturally if you tell me there's a movie that's got a lot of burlesque dancers in it, on one level at least, you've got my attention. But burlesque in general is a strange animal in the entertainment world, living somewhere between striptease and cabaret. When depicted well, it's sexy but not sexual, and that means it walks something of a fine line. It's the PG-13 of entertainment - so no actual nudity, but lots of lingerie, and there might be pasties or strategically-placed covering devices. Some people will appreciate the numbers here for their dance moves, musicality and general showmanship, but there's still a chance that teens and older pervs could still get off on it. But in the new world where any place on the internet is just a few clicks away from hardcore porn, what purpose is left for burlesque to serve?
I've been to burlesque shows, most notably out in San Diego during Comic-Con, one in NYC that was Star Wars-themed, and then one that ran concurrently with a charitable beer event. I think maybe the second year I went out to San Diego there was a comic-book/sci-fi burlesque show called "Comic Strip" (get it?) and I liked what they did, but they ran into two problems - one was using costumes of trademarked characters like Batgirl and Harley Quinn (someone may have dropped a dime to DC/Warner Bros. about unsavory use of their intellectual property) and the other problem was that the event was so popular after two years that a larger burlesque troupe stole the idea and ran the smaller outfit out of town.
So I feel for the characters here, especially the woman running the show in the building she apparently owns but can't afford, or possibly the rent has gone up or the bank is getting ready to foreclose (it's all a bit murky, if I'm being honest). Part of me just thinks that they needed to create some drama how, and the fastest, easiest way to do that was to threaten the loss of the property, which would mean the end of the show, and put everyone out of work. (Hey, it worked for the Muppets, several times now.) And it's got the added bonus of allowing us to root for the "little guys", the people putting on a show on a shoestring (or is that a g-string?) budget. But then part of me thinks that this is just a distraction so we all don't notice that the whole film is just a re-hashed "Showgirls" with less nudity, but better music.
I'm tempted to think of this as "camp", which is often hard to define, but in many ways, you know it when you see it. The story just relies on so many stereotypes, like the "girl from a small town moving to the big city" and the "costume designer who's obviously gay, because he knows fashion and acts catty", and then there's the "tough club owner with a soft heart for the girls who remind her of herself at a young age". Want more? How about the "frazzled ex-husband fearful he'll never get back his investment in the club" and the "hunky millionaire real-estate developer who gets every girl he wants, and every piece of property, too". By the time you realize the bartender is also the "struggling songwriter who's afraid of finishing any tune because he's secretly afraid of being successful", you may wonder if there are any overused tropes that they left out. No, not really.
There's a lot of inconsistency in the nuts-and-bolts operation of the burlesque club, though. All of the girls lip-sync to pre-recorded tracks - umm, except for Nikki, for some reason. Oh, and the club owner, Tess, sings, too - and so does the bouncer/ticket-seller/part-time performer (actually, what IS his job? It's very unclear...). So I guess NOT everyone lip-syncs, so can we please pick a horse and run with it, here? The fact that Ali can sing live, and wants to sing live, would have been more impressive if she had in fact been the first or only one to do so. Why didn't they believe her when she said she could do this, if they already had several dancers who could also sing at the same time? Why does it take Nikki disabling the recorded track out of spite for everyone to realize that Ali has pipes? These revelations come into the plot very haphazardly, if you ask me.
As does the big idea at the end that saves the club. (Though it's a bit unclear, too, are we saving the BUILDING, or the business contained within it? Because those could be two very different things.). God, they telegraphed the big idea from a mile away, because they assumed that people watching aren't up on all these crazy real-estate terms, or the concept of leveraging one buyer against another. Geez, anyone who's ever bought property knows that old trick of saying, "Well, I've got another interested party, so what are YOU offering?" But still, I haven't seen this exact trick used in any other movie, so somehow it manages to be both original AND contrived, which I think might be tough to do.
Also, there's very little consensus about what it means to be a burlesque dancer - there's mention of a pay raise when Ali graduates from bar waitress to performer, but all I could think was, "No, what is she DOING? She's going to miss out on all that tip money from those guys buying bottles of Dom Perignon!" (Come to think of it, if Marcus was in there every night buying overpriced bottles of champagne, then WHY wasn't the club making enough money to pay the bank? Hmmm....). But what about burlesque, is it exploitation or empowerment? Are these girls only doing it to attract husbands, at which point they get pregnant and stop dancing? That doesn't seem very progressive to me. Very mixed signals here where feminism is concerned.
Still, why hasn't this film been turned into a Broadway show yet? It came out nearly ten years ago, and since then they've tried to turn everything from "Spider-Man" to "King Kong" into a Broadway show. This one feels like a natural, it's got the songs and the dance numbers and the cheezy storyline - somebody should get started on this right away if not sooner. So what if some critics panned the movie, it could have a second life as a Broadway show! (just don't bring the kids...) I'd recommend dropping the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number, though, because man, that's dated. Wasn't Marilyn Monroe singing that song in the 1950's?
Also starring Christina Aguilera (last heard in "The Emoji Movie", Cher (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Cam Gigandet (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden"), Kristen Bell (last seen in "Movie 43"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Eric Dane (last seen in "Marley & Me"), Julianne Hough (last seen in "Dirty Grandpa"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Dianna Agron (last seen in "I Am Number Four"), Glynn Turman (last seen in "Race"), David Walton, Terrence Jenkins, Chelsea Traille, Tyne Stecklein (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Michael Landes, Tanee McCall, Paula van Oppen, Isabella Hoffmann, Denise Faye, Blair Redford, Stephen Lee with a cameo from James Brolin (last seen in "The 33").
RATING: 5 out of 10 fishnet stockings
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