Very disappointing...

Fresh and Exciting

Boring

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I usually don't read other reviews before I write my own, but this time I did: bad mistake. So this is more of a protest/review than a regular one. POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT First, the "5.8 out of 10" rating. Good God people, really? Here you have a half-dozen of Hollywood's best actresses doing work THEY formed, researched, polished and performed. I personally feel it is Ms. Hannah, Ms. Oh, Ms. Bauer van Straten and Ms. Tilly's very best work. The story follows a group of exotic dancers through their epically but not abnormally complicated lives. Some of the complications may not be to the liking of softer viewers, but they are treated realistically. But it is the performances of the cast, including great character actor Elias Koteas and Robert Wisdom, who plays the manager, that make this film a classic in its own right. It is really easy to fob this film off as just a movie about strippers. It is so much more many-layered than that. It's sad to read that so few people seem to "get" this film, but I guess their lives were much more protected and distanced from "people like these" (as one reviewer called them) than some of us. Because my personal experience showed me many women just like these - they just never got a movie that showed them truthfully before.

A group of dancers at a gentleman's club has to deal with personal issues when not performing. This movie is supposedly based on improvisations by the actresses and it shows. There isn't much of a plot and the story wanders all over the place. There is a plot line about a Russian contract killer that seems to have been spliced in from another movie altogether. The characters are mostly stereotypes and uninteresting. There are some funny scenes, such as Oh visiting Hannah's apartment and talking about rats in the air conditioning, but otherwise it's too long and dull, despite the flesh parade. A far more interesting film set in a strip club is Atom Egoyan's "Exotica."

I found this a strange film to watch for the first time, as the principal characters all gave me the impression that I was watching a social documentary showing the real lives of real strippers, even though I knew these characters were being played by half a dozen well known actresses who had presumably learned to strip just for this film. I was expecting a fictional story which involved them all to develop, but this never happened. Ultimately this mystery was partly solved in the final credit sequences which explain that the film's characters were developed during a series of "improvisational workshops" in which all the principal members of the cast participated. (I understand that the DVD includes additional extras which usefully expand these explanations, but I have not seen these.) This unusual, but in my opinion largely successful, approach has generated a great deal of controversy among the users of IMDb as fifty comments on this film, ranging from highly enthusiastic to extremely critical, have so far been posted. Viewer ratings are widely spread through the whole range from 1 to 10, and show that the film is most highly regarded by young women whilst it has least appeal for young men. I am not clear whether the cast were assembled for the first such workshop in time to contribute to the decision to locate most of the action for this film in a Los Angeles strip club. There have been many films such as "Steamed" or "First Wives Club" that largely comprise dialogue between a group of women; usually with the link that they all attended the same school or college at some time in the past, and clearly almost any venue where women characteristically meet together could be used for a film of this type. If this decision was made by the film's promoters before the cast list was assembled, it would be interesting to know the reason for it - the average age of a successful actress is very different from that of the typical pulchritudinous 18 to 25 year olds who most frequently perform in these clubs. Another problem is that all the principal characters are, for obvious dramatic reasons, shown as somewhat dysfunctional. In practice I am sure that many of the performers in strip clubs are perfectly normal, if somewhat uninhibited, local housewives who find that an occasional session 'at the club' provides an easy way for them to keep fit which not only saves the costs of belonging to a health club but in addition enables them to make a little money through part time earnings. Since the operator of the Blue Iguana is shown as a somewhat unpleasant character this singularity is easily explained, but the film might have been more credible if it had been planned as a true documentary rather than a pseudo documentary. If on the other hand the strip club venue was selected by the chosen cast at their first workshop we can have much more fun considering why this was their choice. I recall a comment by one reviewer after seeing the film "Striptease' that Demi Moore made stripping seem like an Olympic sport. A psychologist might tell us that most women have the occasional urge to flaunt their charms in this rather blatant way but are held back by propriety, and so an opportunity to do so in the guise of another character would be very appealing; a casting director might point out that a successful role in such a part could provide cast members with a career plus which would significantly increase the probability of landing other very rewarding parts in the future; a health consultant might simply comment that playing such a physically demanding role would clearly be very beneficial to any actress whose recent work had left her a little jaded; a marketing consultant might comment that any film featuring strippers can be counted on to generate a lot of interest; and a gossip columnist might unkindly associate this choice of part with an attempt to recover lost youth. We can easily postulate several other possible motives for the choice - my point here is simply to note that a film structured to provide so much food for thought is challenging enough to have the potential to be a very good film, whether it finally succeeds is a matter of individual judgement.What is the viewer left with after watching this film? Certainly some exceptionally well rounded characters very competently played by the cast member concerned. On this basis I would rate the film as worth 7 on a 10 point scale, although with less competent acting there might not have been enough 'meat' to warrant a rating of more than 3. Full marks to the cast and Director for creating a number of quite memorable cameos (it would be unfair to single out any individual cast members for special mention although naturally some of the parts are much stronger than others). These cameos make it a rewarding film to watch, and it deserves to have been much more successful than it was. The main weakness is its lack of a coherent storyline and its very inconclusive ending, although I personally believe that both these could have been made much less significant by more effective work on the cutting room floor.One warning - this film is certainly not a celluloid version of strip club entertainment in the way that, for example, 'Mondo Topless' was. Those whose primarily interest is in the venue should visit a real club and not watch this film. Although it shows plenty of nudity (which often appears rather self-conscious as camera angles almost always limit it to toplessness), and the dancing is extremely well portrayed; this is not presented in the progressive and provocative way that regular visitors to such clubs would probably expect.

I had rented the film twice in two years and decided to buy it about a month after I rented it the second time. At first I rented it because I have always been fascinated w/that side of life. I had seen Showgirls before, and I found Blue Iguana to be much more tasteful. There is no total nudity and the director says why in the commentary. Blue Iguana is also much more realistic than Showgirls. There is no such thing as if you do REALLY good as a stripper, someone may discover you and give you an audition for a more prestigious dancing job. They don't give lap dances to beautiful clientèle. The strippers in B.I. never wake up & suddenly realize that they live in a toxic world. The VIP dancer is not a "star' offstage, she's what the regular's lives could degenerate into. When I finally bought the DVD for myself, I did not expect to become so involved in the special features. First there is a documentary that Daryl Hannah did about her research at a strip club. (Side note: The documentary & commentaries really made me want to learn how to pole dance. It takes so much muscular strength to do those moves that anyone who was decent at it had a body to die for i.e. Simone in the documentary & Daryl Hannah.) Then, there are two commentaries -- a more poignant, almost poetic commentary by the films director. And another commentary by three of the films actors. Because the film was based on improvisations and the improvisations were based on the intense research the actors and the director did, they were able to comment about what drove these women or what caused these women to have stagnant lives and either not do anything they set out to do or leave everything half finished. I found myself identifying w/ about half of their comments and really wanting to do something about it. Aside from the commentaries, I really enjoyed the film. They managed to put some humor in the film -- via Daryl Hannah's character and sometimes Jennifer Tilly. Sandra Oh is just magnificent. The emotion & facial expression she managed to put in her "good-bye" dance is just awesome.