The Our Favorite Movies series continues with Clarence’s Volume 5 entry, a guilty pleasure in 1995’s Showgirls. Awful film? Camp classic? Misunderstood masterpiece? Or all three?
This week kicks off the fifth volume of the Our Favorite Movies series. We’re putting quotes around “Favorite” as Clarence’s entry, 1995’s Showgirls, falls more in the guilty pleasure favorite category. Reviled on its 1995 release, Showgirls took on the NC-17 rating with a wide release and miles of publicity. Yet, the soft-core porn feel to the advertising coupled with savage critical reactions effectively killed the theatrical release. However, 20 years later, Showgirls emerged as one of MGM’s highest grossing catalog titles (it’s grossed well over $100 million since release). It’s also earned a critical reappraisal of sorts as many European filmmakers and critics came to its rescue. We’ll explore the phenomenon that is Showgirls and dive into its merits (there are a few) and demerits (there are lots) here at the Water Cooler.
But first on TV Tidbits, the reboot demon reared its ugly head again this week. This week saw rumors of reboots for Frasier on CBS plus a gaggle of classic TV shows including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. We’re sure there are others. We’ve been on the record that reboots are bad in general, but sometimes a gem pops through like Netflix’s One Day At a Time re-imagining. Can any of these titles bear the same fruit? Plus, we talk about Phoebe Waller-Bridge, fresh off an Emmy nomination, who just announced deferring writing Killing Eve Season 2 to focus on Fleabag.
We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.
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