The filmmakers rub our noses in the whole sordid sex thing we love to hate and hate to love, no doubt laughing at us the entire time, all the way to the bank.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 27, 2024

Whatever Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven may say about going behind the scenes in Vegas, they have made a film to highlight little more than prurient interest.

| Mar 27, 2024

Dirty, crude, often tasteless and at times downright nasty, Showgirls is also a gripping and uncompromising look behind the Vegas glitz.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 27, 2024

Director Verhoeven, a brilliant moviemaker, keeps punching Showgirls across with such galvanizing speed and vitality, such roaring movement and dazzling visuals, that you're continually sucked into every scene, even the stupidest ones.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 27, 2024

Showgirls would be offensive if it hadn't been hyped ("Leave your inhibitions at the door" winked the US publicity). But it has.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 11, 2020

Is it sexy? Not when you're laughing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 29, 2019

The thin, terrible people of 'Showgirls' are equally loathsome; you don't have a rooting interest in Nomi or her "dream," and as a result, 'Showgirls' is 131 minutes of watching trashy, vapid people being terrible to each other.

| May 27, 2016

Showgirls... is one of those delirious, hilarious botches that could be taught in film schools as a How Not To.

| Jun 12, 2013

Berkley's acting début is a joy, if you can call it acting: she jumps up and down a lot to indicate excitement.

| Jun 12, 2013

One thing I'll say for Showgirls, it's educational. But sadly, it isn't much else.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 12, 2013

Showgirls is a stripper that thinks it's a dancer.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 7, 2011

The only positive thing there is to say about "Showgirls" is that the sensibility of the film perfectly matches that of its milieu.

| Jul 6, 2010

Berkley is good. Besides her dancing sizzle, she does what she can with the mechanically viperous character she was given to play.

| May 27, 2009

Joe Eszterhas' by-numbers script recycles the baggy, Faustian 'ingénue comes to the big bad city' tale and stuffs it into a skimpy, lamé-bedecked version of the 'let's put on a show' musical.

| Jun 24, 2006

Showgirls is one of the most honest satires of recent years.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 18, 2004

The film makers had declared they were bravely exploring new levels of licentiousness, but the biggest risk they've taken here is in making a nearly $40 million movie without anyone who can act.

| May 20, 2003

The script -- a generic blend mixing the soap of All About Eve with the suds of Valley of the Dolls -- is replete with the clunkiest dialogue this side of Peyton Place.

| Apr 12, 2002

A film of thunderous oafishness that gives adult subject matter the kind of bad name it does not need or deserve.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 13, 2001

A waste of a perfectly good NC-17 rating.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Think of Flashdance but with an unappealing leading lady playing a woman whose fierce ambition is to do something not admirable, just ridiculous.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000