Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Tuesday Trainwreck - The Reason Why Elizabeth Berkley Doesn't Have A Career Anymore


1995 was a crazy year. The European Union was still forming, the Space Shuttle docked with the Mir space station for the first time, and people were setting off bombs in Oklahoma City. And there was also some court case about an ex-football player named O.J. But all that was trumped by a singular motion picture release. One film that changed the world as we know it. A mere 128 minutes that redefined everything that we thought we knew. That film - that epic - was none other than Showgirls:



In case you hadn't figured it out by now, that was my sarcastic voice. I know, it sounds a lot like my regular voice. Anyway, some genius decided that it was time to re-release Showgirls on DVD - again - so here we are, with cannon fodder.

For those of you that were living under a rock back in the year of our Yahoo!, let me break down the movie for you. Showgirls tells the story of Elizabeth Berkley trying to find work after Saved By The Bell came to a close, and she was passed over for The College Years. Undaunted, Liz bravely makes her way to Las Vegas, desperate to prove that it doesn't take a huge rack to make it in Sin City, as long as you're willing to show off what you've got. Her efforts are stymied by the incumbent slut on stage, but after pulling a Tonya Harding on the competition, and with a little help from that guy from Twin Peaks, she becomes the next big thing. Take that Tiffani-Amber Thiessen!

For some unknown reason, this flick has actually become a cult classic over the years. Personally, I think that a lot of people just have really bad taste, or haven't discovered how much more entertaining other diversions can by, like watching paint dry or needlepoint. Or maybe it's just all those guys that grew up watching SBTB can't enough of seeing Jessie's knockers on screen, and thinking about what might have been if only they had been cast over Mario Lopez as her high school love interest. Don't worry guys - he didn't touch her either. He was much too busy rubbing suntan lotion on Mark Paul Gosselarr to notice her.

Besides, everyone knows that the first season of SBTB was the best, before Jessie and Kelly showed up, when Hayley Mills taught a young Zack and Screech how to be men in this dog eat dog world. Wait, what were we discussing again?