Striptease = Scriptease

Not since Julie Andrews bared it all has the American fetishization of the female breast been so (how shall I say it...) exposed.

Demi Moore, star of such recent blockbuster films as The Scarlet Letter, apparently received $12.5 million dollars to reveal to the world two things about which the world already suspected a great deal -- she is not a good actress and she knows a very good plastic surgeon. What's funny is that the movie for which she has been given such an embarrassment of riches is Striptease.

Striptease is based on a Carl Hiassen book of the same name. Hiassen's novels are ostensibly crime stories, but they are really comic romps through southern Florida, a world which specializes in producing true mutants: lawyers, strippers, fixers, congressmen, bouncers, sugar barons and cops.

Somehow, Striptease lap danced its way through the byzantine Hollywood system and found itself attached, almost literally, to Demi Moore -- an actress who hasn't had a big hit since the excruciating Disclosure (where we come very close to seeing her breasts) of summers past.

Demi plays (and I use the word loosely) Erin, a former secretary at the FBI who loses her job and her daughter because of a no-good bum of a wheel-chair stealing husband. In order to raise the money she needs to mount a successful custody battle, Erin is forced into the bizarre world of stripping. A drunken congressman and a dead patron later and the plot of Striptease is in full swing.

Or at least full schizophrenic disorder.

Directed by Andrew Bergman, a man better known for his comedy than his nudity, Striptease is a movie cleft in two. On the one hand, it's a movie about wanting to see Demi Moore's tits, on the other hand it's the aforementioned crime comedy.

In fact, the what little tension exists in the first act of Striptease is sustained, not through plot or character development, but solely on the classic stripper's device of hiding what everyone came to see. Through the magic of editing Demi Moore manages to complete two routines on the stage of her club, The Eager Beaver, without ever showing us what 12.5 mil can buy.

The stripping scenes call an almost painful attention to the division at the heart of Striptease. They are shot utterly without humor and yet seem equally determined to deny even the slightest twinge of eroticism. Instead they are dead time, just Demi's frighteningly developed thighs and a chance to listen to all your favorite Annie Lenox tunes.

Not surprisingly, when the gloves finally come off it is not too little to late. And let me just end the suspense for those of you who've been reading this article hoping to have Demi's breasts described. There are two of them and they are of a goodly size, though not overly large. What's disturbing about them is their uncanny erectness. Demi's breasts appear barely a part of her at all, rather they seem like two satellites in a stable geo-synchronous orbit around her eerily taught body. This is the new ideal of beauty as concocted by the mad-scientists and marketing geniuses at Paramount.

Once Striptease breaks through the breast barrier, however, certain of its other charms begin to peek through. Burt Reynolds performance as Congressman Dilbeck, though slightly over-the-top, has a certain manic humor to it and his vaseline covered entrance to a Young Christians dinner is a scene of deep and lasting value.

Ving Rhames too reveals a dead-pan comic touch as Shad, bouncer and protector of strippers everywhere. Robert Patrick is entertaining as Demi's scumbag, morphine addled husband.

Much of the comedy of Striptease is in the background, minor characters and tiny details (The Masada Retirement Community) are infinitely more entertaining than Demi and Armand Assante, who sleepwalks his way through a role as the friendly cop who assists the stripper with a breast of silicon.

Once Striptease gets going the comedy begins to emerge more strongly, but it's never quite enough to overcome the unbalanced feeling of the movie as a whole or Demi's terrible acting. And so, like Cable Guy before it, another almost good movie is badly injured by the addition of a star who doesn't fit.

Demi herself put it best when she asked Armand Assante, "How did I get to be so popular?" I'm guessing that there are two reasons.

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