"You Don't Nomi" Review

Showgirls. What is your reaction to that word and the 1995 trash cult classic movie of that name? Reviled in its time, it has undergone multiple reevaluations, reinterpretations and rehabilitations as it's become a queer camp icon with parody stage musicals, drag midnight screenings and more chin-stroking academic navel-gazing books than you'd think a movie about strippers would merit. Now all that retconning has its own documentary, You Don't Nomi. (A play on the main character's name, Nomi.)

Director-writer-editor-producer Jeffrey McHale presents the arguments of various authors and commentators, tracing the three stage Hegelian dialectic that regarded the film as initially a "Piece of Sh*t", then revised into a "Masterpiece", before post-ironically being deemed a "Masterpiece of Sh*t." He illustrates observations about director Paul Verhoeven's thematic repetitions throughout his oeuvre with clips from his early Dutch films like Spetters and Turkish Delight through his Hollywood hits like Total Recall and RoboCop concerning the media or women vomiting. (When cut together, it begins to look like a kink.) 

The speakers are never shown in a variation of the usual talking head format allowing the viewer to focus on their words and what McHale juxtaposes underneath. A lot of the time I was thinking that a lot of people are really overthinking a dumb stripper melodrama whose greatest accomplishment was to put Gina Gershon onto my radar and guarantee I'd be seeing Bound the next year.

The third act also drags a bit while diverting into the story of April Kidwell, who was roofied and raped while a karaoke hostess in NYC and found her way back to empowerment by first playing Elizabeth Berkley's character, Jessie Spano, in Bayside! The Musical which spoofed Saved By The Bell, then playing Nomi in Showgirls: The Musical with all the nudity intact. (She's got the physique for it.)

Over a decade ago there was a documentary called Room 237 about the wild interpretations some folks with way too much free time on their hands had regarding Stanley Kubrick's The Shining; like how they believe some detail was his confession that he'd faked the Moon landing for NASA. You Don't Nomi is ultimately more entertaining because the fact so many people are overthinking Showgirls isn't much different than any movie with a big fandom where theories help keep the movie's world alive in their hearts. (And it has way more boobs to look at. Oink.)

Score: 6/10. Catch it on AMC+.