`Showgirls' Dances On Shallow Ground

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XX "Showgirls," with Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle MacLachlan, Glenn Plummer, Gina Ravera. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, from a script by Joe Eszterhas. Alderwood, Egyptian, Factoria, Kirkland Parkplace, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, SeaTac North, Valley drive-in. "NC-17" - No one under 17 admitted. -----------------------------------------------------------------

A richly sleazy kitsch-fest about predatory show-biz types, this glitzy Vegas epic is a worthy candidate for Movieline magazine's monthly feature, "Bad Movies We Love."

The dialogue alone is so quotably shameless that it instantly evokes another, soapier era. When was the last time you heard the manager of a Vegas theater announce that "the Stardust is never dark - never will be - not as long as I'm alive"?

While "break a leg" is never actually uttered, it's all but invoked when a temporarily disabled star philosophizes: "There's always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you."

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas does feel obliged to update some of this stuff, so he makes his chorus-line director meaner than a dismissive drill sergeant ("Goodbye ladies, you wasted my time and yours") and turns the casual use of drugs into a running gag. The ever-snorting star insists that cocaine is "great for the muscles," while another showgirl claims that she chipped her tooth on a

Quaalude.

The pragmatic heroine, Nomi, has a harshness that's also fresh. She pulls a knife on men who threaten her; she's an insult artist whose career advances partly because she doesn't hide her feelings. Her philosophy may come from T-shirt slogans, she may live on potato chips and fatburgers, but she's a talented dancer with a great figure and a knack for seductive posing.

As a Vegas choreographer puts it, she's "all pelvis thrust" - which could also describe every topless dance number in the movie.

Booked into 1,300 theaters this weekend, "Showgirls" is breaking the major-studio rules by going out with an NC-17 rating, which makes it off-limits to moviegoers under 17. But it's a pretty calculated gamble, selling not only lots of showgirl skin but a storyline that's awfully familiar.

Having run his whodunit formula ("Basic Instinct," "Sliver") into the ground, Eszterhas borrows this time from the first big X-rated hit, "Midnight Cowboy," which was also about an ambitious newcomer to a big city - which the filmmakers promised to expose in a frank and unprecedented manner.

The rest of the movie is basically "All About Eve," complete with its ambitious performer who studies every move of the big star, goes after her boyfriend and ruthlessly arranges to become her understudy. Like the deceptive Eve, the heroine of "Showgirls" is a fugitive who covers up her past, which is eventually revealed in a series of melodramatic flourishes that can't help but inspire hoots from the audience.

Even that has a precedent in "All About Eve." In the words of one of "Eve's" supporting players, Thelma Ritter, who had her doubts about Eve's tale of woe: "What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end!"

The difference here is that Eszterhas is asking us to buy it, and there's little reason to believe anything he tells us about the up-and-coming Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) or the threatened queen of the Vegas strip, Cristal (Gina Gershon). The supporting roles are even less substantial.

Both actresses achieve an artificiality that's positively stunning, although this appears to be exactly what director Paul Verhoeven intended. After all, as one character says, "Nomi is what Las Vegas is all about."