Oh Geez, Striptease

Oh. My. God. I just saw Striptease for the first time. I remember all the hoopla when it came out 10 years ago. The big deal was Demi Moore getting all naked. Oddly, most of the actual critiques of the movie implied it was a serious piece about a woman in bad circumstances trying to win back custody of her daughter. The other big news at the time was that it was Burt Reynolds' big comeback. On all counts I say "Uhm, no."

Yeah, Demi Moore was hot if you like that sort of athletic body with Tour de France cycling thighs. Although I am heterosexual, my personal preference for women's thighs are more along the long, lean ballet dancer look. She was very pretty throughout the film, but what was the big deal about the nudity? We've seen nearly all the big women stars naked. Hell, even Hellen Mirren was probably naked in something. I mean I've even seen Nicole Kidman's boobs and she is one of the highest paid actresses out there.

As for Burt Reynolds doing some big thing: Yeah I didn't see it. Maybe the fact that he was finally hired and wasn't playing a womanizing (oh wait he was), know-it-all (oh wait he was), smartass (uhm, he was), hot young stud (yeah he was SO NOT playing that) was a big deal at the time, but he wasn't even CLOSE to the level of performance of his role in Boogie Nights. I'd say THAT was his big comeback.

I had a bad feeling when the opening credits started and they looked like credits from a bad late 70's TV movie. IMDB lists this movie as a Comedy / Drama / Crime / Thriller . Okay I laughed once when I was supposed to: at something Ving Rhames said - and I already forgot what it was. I did laugh a lot AT the movie though. Drama? Not so much. Crime? Yeah, there was lots of that (and I'm not even counting this movie being made). Thriller? Uhm, again, not so much. The redneck/comic relief characters played by Robert Patrick and Siobhan Fallon were particularly painful to watch. If you weren't paying attention you might think someone had changed the channel during their scenes. PLUS they had Robert Patrick doing the "comedy" part and the "thriller" part. How stupid is that. How scary can a guy be that was doing slapstick?

And why was Armand Assante supposed to be Hispanic? That was just silly. Speaking of silly: Why would Demi Moore let her daughter Rumer be in this movie? I can just picture this conversation: "You get to be in a MOVIE! But you can never ever watch it!" And you know that even though she is now 18, she can't/doesn't want to watch this movie. I mean who wants to watch their mom as a naked stripper? How weird is that?

I also don't understand why, with all the publicity at the time, that Ving Rhames wasn't even mentioned. He's the only good thing in the movie. Okay I should take that back. Rumer did a great job, and I bet the soundtrack is KILLER. I DID like the music. I guess the stupidest part is I just spent all this time talking about a movie that I thought was goofy as hell.

Oh and I also saw The Phantom of the Opera today. Uhm.

Uhm.

Oh yeah, I loved the songs! That's the magic of the music of the night all right.