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| A bitter custody battle leads Erin Grant (Demi Moore) to take desperate action. |
Release Date: June 23, 1996. Running Time: 117 minutes. Screenplay: Andrew Bergman. Based on the novel by: Carl Hiaasen. Producer: Andrew Bergman, Mike Lobell. Director: Andrew Bergman.
THE PLOT:
Erin Grant (Demi Moore) was a secretary for the FBI - until her drug addicted criminal husband, Darrell (Robert Patrick), got her fired. Worse: This is South Florida, Darrell was a football star in high school, and the good-ole-boy judge was a big fan... and thus awards him full custody of their 7-year-old daughter (Rumer Willis).
It will cost $15,000 to pay for an appeal, and so Erin goes to work at strip club The Eager Beaver. She quickly attracts a following, particularly superfan Jerry (William Hill). When Jerry recognizes Congressman David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds) at the club, he decides to help Erin by shaking Dilbeck down for his help in overturning the judge's decision.
The next day, Jerry's body washes up on the shore where Lt. Al Garcia (Armand Assante) is vacationing. The dead man's home is decorated with pictures of Erin, leading Garcia to question her. Dilbeck's people are also looking for her. His handlers are nervous that she might talk, while Dilbeck mainly just wants her for himself.
All of which leaves Erin to resort to a desperate gambit: to save her life from the congressman's ruthless associates; to save herself from his lecherous attentions; and to save her daughter from a future likely to be destroyed by her ex-husband!
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| Bouncer Shad (Ving Rhames) tries to get rich by planting cockroaches in yogurt. |
CHARACTERS:
Erin: While I don't think this movie is anywhere near as bad as its reputation, it does have one massive weakness - and that is Demi Moore. It's very clear that she worked hard to get the dance scenes right. Too bad about the rest. At its heart, this is a goofy comedy/thriller with a dose of satire, but Moore plays it as Serious Drama, complete with scenes of her Brooding Alone in the Rain (TM). The result is tonal whiplash, as if a television remote was glitching between Mel Brooks and a particularly expensive Lifetime movie.
Lt. Garcia: The usually interesting Armand Assante shows up for a paycheck performance as the dutiful cop investigating Jerry's death. There's nothing interesting to say about this character, whose personality begins and ends with "good cop." Assante doesn't exactly sleepwalk - he gives a competent, professional performance - but he isn't bringing anything extra to the table. Still, I appreciate that Garcia is a happily married family man, who is never once posited as a potential love interest for Erin.
Darrell: Striptease's saving grace is its supporting cast, with Robert Patrick particularly good as Erin's loser ex-husband. Darrell is a small-time criminal whose latest brainstorm is stealing wheelchairs. Granted custody of his daughter, he uses her as a prop to make the thefts easier. He preens through life, clearly believing himself to be some kind of mastermind, even as he becomes ever more ragged and beat up across the running time. By the final Act, he resembles nothing so much as a drunken scarecrow. The contrast between his arrogance and his petty idiocy makes his scenes the most consistently entertaining in the film.
Shad: Ving Rhames is also terrific, as usual, as club bouncer Shad. He gets laughs just through the use (and exaggeration) of his immense physical presence: lounging in the strippers' dressing room, a monkey sitting on his head as he flips through the Wall Street Journal, or sitting in his lawyer's office while putting one foot up on the other man's desk. When asked if he's familiar with Congressman Dilbeck, he removes his glasses and deadpans: "Do I look like I follow politics?" He is absolutely protective of Erin and her daughter. In his very first scene, he offers to give Darrell a beating, something Erin has to talk him out of.
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| Congressman Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), covered in vaseline and sniffing some of Erin's dryer lint. |
BURT REYNOLDS AS CONGRESSMAN DAVID DILBECK:
Burt Reynolds lobbied hard for the role of Dilbeck, taking a pay cut to secure what he believed would be his comeback role. It didn't work out so well, with the Razzies naming him 1996's Worst Supporting Actor. Personally, I enjoyed much of his performance.
Dilbeck is more snake oil salesman than policymaker, publicly declaring himself a champion of family values when he is, in actuality, an utter degenerate. After he becomes obsessed with Erin, he orders his long-suffering aide to steal her dryer lint. Shortly thereafter, the young man finds his boss sniffing the lint while covered head to toe in vaseline... backstage at an event he's sponsoring for a church group. Dilbeck grins as he declares of the vaseline: "I can feel it squishin' between my toes!"
Most reviewers thought he went too far, coming across as more creepy than funny. That element of the performance makes sense when you read about the reshoots. Originally, Dilbeck attempted to rape Erin at knife-point, but test audiences didn't like "the funny one" turning violent. The scene was reshot so that he was just goofy instead. A minor issue on its own... except that it leaves that dangerous element of his performance without a payoff.
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| Erin performs at the club, in a sequence that does a surprisingly expert job of setting up the entire plot. |
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
Striptease is a movie with a lot of problems, but its opening ten minutes are surprisingly well-scripted. After a teaser that sets up Erin's custody battle, the next ten minutes sets up all the major threads that will take us through the rest of the movie. Erin is established in her new job, talking about the appeal she's filed. Shad is introduced and his sympathy for Erin is made clear. Erin mentions superfan Jerry (whom we see in the audience), assuring Shad that she considers him to be harmless. Congressman Dilbeck arrives, watches Erin dance, and declares her an "angel." Dilbeck creates a scene, and Jerry recognizes him and snaps a photo. By the 11-minute mark, the story is ready to be set in motion.
Given that Striptease marks the second stripper-focused Golden Raspberry winner in a row, some comparison with Showgirls is unavoidable. Well, this one sequence features sharper and just plain more efficient screenwriting than anything in Showgirls's entire running time - though I'll also admit that it's better put together than anything else in the rest of this movie.
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| A legend in his own mind: Robert Patrick gets laughs and steals scenes as Erin's idiot, criminal ex-husband. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
Striptease's two major problems are inextricably intertwined: its tone and its pacing. The scenes featuring Dilbeck, Darryl, and Shad are generally fun to watch. Then we cut to Erin and... it comes crashing to a halt.
Nor can all the blame for this be put on Moore's performance. On the page, her scenes in the first half of the movie are dull and repetitive. Let me summarize those scenes: Erin is sad about her daughter. Erin is worried about her daughter. Erin is sad some more. There are at least three scenes that could be summarized with, "Erin is sad/worried." Another scene, that lasts far too long, sees in a good mood as she dances alone in her apartment. Then Lt. Garcia arrives to give her bad news, and she is sad again. And I'm left wondering if we keep cutting back just to remind viewers that Demi Moore is meant to be the star.
I can envision a 96-minute version of this that would be snappy and fast-paced. The actual story is good, and author Carl Hiassen was reportedly pleased that the film stuck more or less to his novel. But at 117 minutes, it's too long. It takes well over an hour for Erin to realize that she's in danger and to become proactive in solving her problems. That's a point that should have been reached by the 45-minute mark - at the latest!
The back half is mostly enjoyable as the various threads start coming together. There are some scenes that nicely balance suspense and comedy when Robert Patrick's ex-husband stumbles idiotically into the action. By this point, however, I suspect a lot of viewers had already mentally checked out. And while I had fun with the final Act, the climax still feels like it needs something more to really push the zaniness.
Ultimately, I think that screenwriter Andrew Bergman needed a better director than himself. His script delivers several funny moments. As director, he shoots in what I think would be best described as "TV movie" style, relying entirely on his cast to infuse scenes with energy. He retains repetitive beats that should have been removed, and he allows his star to act as if she's in a completely different movie than everyone else. A stronger hand would likely have taken this material and delivered a better result.
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| Jerry (William Hill), Erin's superfan, comes up with a plan to help her. I never said it was a good plan. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
1996 is another year in which I only saw one of the Worst Picture nominees: The Stupids, a Tom Arnold flick based on a series of children's novels. I can't really comment on it, since the only scene I remember is Tom Arnold singing, I'm My Own Grandpa. I'm pretty sure it's the only scene of that movie that anyone remembers...
Barb Wire was Baywatch star Pamela Anderson Lee's attempt to break into film stardom. Reading a plot synopsis, it basically amounts to a sci-fi/action version of Casablanca, with Anderson Lee in the Humphrey Bogart role. I'm sure it's dreadful, but it likely has some camp comedy value.
Ed was another TV star's attempt to make it in movies, this time Friends star Matt LeBlanc playing opposite a chimpanzee in a baseball movie. I suspect it's just as good as it sounds.
The Island of Doctor Moreau had a troubled production that included changes in director and lead actor. Marlon Brando plays the title character, which would have been fantastic... in the 1970s. But this was mid-1990s Marlon Brando, so the results were less good. On the plus side, this disaster eventually yielded Lost Soul, a rather good 2014 documentary about the unmaking of the movie.
I would hazard a guess that Doctor Moreau and Ed are likely worse movies than Striptease - but I'm not about to sacrifice my time to find out.
OVERALL:
This being the '90s, Striptease tried to bill itself as an erotic movie. It isn't. The strip club scenes are a very small portion of the running time, and only a few seconds here and there show actual nudity (a bit more in the unrated cut). Yes, you see Demi Moore's breasts... unless you happen to blink at the wrong second.
For the most part, this is a standard comedy/thriller, and the film is easily at its best when it plays to that genre combo. The movie's biggest problem is the uneven tone and pace that keep it from ever building the kind of zany, comic steam that it so desperately needs. There are funny scenes and good performances, but it takes far too long for it to properly build.
In the end, Striptease is no better than mediocre, but it's also no worse than that. Not only would I argue against its Worst Picture win - I actually had a better time than I expected watching it!
Rating: Raspberry.
Worst Picture - 1995: Showgirls
Worst Picture - 1997: The Postman
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