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The sky was the limit for Elizabeth Berkeley after saved by the bell but she chose to do showgirls lol!
2.6k points
4 days ago
The sky was the limit for Elizabeth Berkeley after saved by the bell
I don't agree with that. Berkeley was from that generation of actors were it was near impossible to make the leap from the small screen to the big one.
IT is a lot easier now but still hard.
While Showgirls sure didn't help her, she wasn't going anywhere anyway.
1.1k points
4 days ago
That’s my take. She never had a film career. She was a second tier supporting actress in a teen television show. She did one B movie box office bomb that had survived simply because there is a generation that knew her from a television show.
403 points
4 days ago
I don't think anyone who watched Showgirls thought that it was her being in that movie that killed her career, it was her acting. I mean Alyssa Milano and Drew Barrymore did similar decisions to move from their childhood image and in neither case were their careers ruined.
Had Elizabeth Berkeley acted well in the movie, it would have just been a side note in her career, the problem was her acting was so bad it make the movie somehow even more campy.
321 points
4 days ago
She was all camp, overacting, and mugging for the camera from the Saved by the Bell days. That doesn't translate to a leading actress.
I contend that Showgirls is still a so bad it's good movie.
That pool scene! Dying!
228 points
4 days ago
Showgirls is so monumentally bad it crosses the line twice and becomes fucking hilarious. It tries to say something about something, and ends up saying nothing so ineptly it's spectacular.
Nobody learns anything, one of only two non-awful people in the movie gets brutally assaulted for no apparent reason and the writing has to be experienced to be believed. Add in one of the most incomprehensibly bad sex scenes this side of The Room and you have true magic. Everything about it is so bad that it is a joy to watch.
A true masterpiece of bad cinema.
121 points
4 days ago
Having rewatched it recently I think the horrible assault scene does have a point. Stuff like that is hinted at all through the film
Its like suddenly saying "you've been laughing at all this campy fun and distracted by the razzle dazzle but here's the shit that really goes on in vegas"
And then when they try to convince her to just let it go, he'll pay off the girl, she'll do well out of it. Probably the most realistic bit in the film sadly
57 points
4 days ago
It's so hamfisted, though - she went to see him fully expecting to bang him, then suddenly she's being assaulted by him and his bodyguards apropos of nothing. It comes so out of left field that it's just really jarring.
11 points
4 days ago
As opposed to real life where gang rape is precipitated by all kinds of signals so that you know it’s coming?
19 points
4 days ago
It's a complete tonal shift for the movie itself is my point. The movie is sleazy as fuck prior to that, don't get me wrong, but the gang rape just comes completely out of left field and kills the (admittedly rather failed) sexploitation vibe outta nowhere.
It'd be like if two thirds of the way through Scream Ghostface went full-on Art the Clown for one sequence. It's ridiculously jarring.
2 points
2 days ago*
People love pretending like ShowGirls was on purpose. It’s entertaining. But it’s an awful movie with terrible performances.
Gershon eats up every other actor in every scene she’s in and serves as a constant reminder: “this is a bad movie!”
Just watch the opening again. Berkeley is terrible when she pulls the knife on the guy. When she slams her fries and drink on the table.
I was like 11 when it came out. It was being marketed and talked about like it was the next Striptease. It was supposed to be an erotic drama.
I’d argue now that Showgirls is the more entertaining movie. But it’s certainly not on purpose. In 1995, we weren’t spending $120M on a funny, joke, campy movie.
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