Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven

I really don't think we needed a sequel to the awful Showgirls almost 20 years after the fact.

Imagine Showgirls horrible acting and nonsense plot only even worse, along with a home camcorder and no budget for effects or proper editing. The video is horrible, the sound is horrible, it doesn't even have the hint of sensuality that Showgirls 1 failed to ultimately deliver. The only redeeming feature of this film is Rena Riffel looks just as good as she did back then, possibly even better. If this had been a little campier it could have gone into cult status. As such its just a really bad amateur film the world never needed.

If you need a T&A fix there's better movies, not the least of which is the unrated Showgirls.

Compared to this, Showgirls is a Oscar winning masterpiece. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in this movie is even decent. The plot, the acting, the camera work is all horribly wrong. The only reason to watch this is you want to take tips of how not to make a bad movie.

If there ever was a movie that should have never been thought of, written, shared, cast, rehearsed, shot, edited nor released, this is it.

Yes, I watched all 2 1/2 hours of this film with my wife.

TLDR; Is it enjoyable? Yes. In a bad movie way.

The film starts slow... But soon turns into one of the most disjointed, bizarre, over the top attempts to make a movie, and I still have no idea if Rena Riffel intended to make a comedy or drama.

There's a running plot about "Penny" now Helga wanting to be in some sort of softcore TV revue? And she need to take ballet lessons at Juliard "or something" to make this work? Helga is monumentally dumb, but it's hard to tell if this is being played for laughs or not.

She meets the crazily busty older stripper who plays the Gina Gershon role here. Man, this lady butchers some screen time before she chews it up. After 2 hours, I was enamored with her completely hyperbolic performance. She managed to top Elizabeth Berkely for delivering all of her lines dialed up to 11. The scene where she freaks out with the cold cream... There are scenes in this movie that will live in your brain.

Yes, there's nudity. The tone veers like a drunken teenager driving. Scenes go from two girls getting sensual over giant hot dogs to Penny talking about losing custody of her daughter and back again in under a minute. No one behaves rationally. The camerawork is film noir one second, Dutch angles the next, and stationary home movie at random. Random living rooms and restaurants are played off as swanky strip clubs. The music is just AWFUL.

I have to give a individual paragraph to the outfits. Some of the most gloriously trashy clothing known to man. Even when there isn't nudity, the skimpy outfits provide plenty of titillation.

But there a certain charm that comes from the effort here. From long weirdly philosophical monologues, the (at times) hallucinogenic sets and backgrounds, and general poorly performed weirdness.

This is not a good movie. It's not a competent attempt at filmmaking. It has no point, no through plot, no sense of style. But it was enjoyable. It was campy, bizarre, maybe even a little sexy at times. I'd sit and watch it again.

Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven: 1 out of 10: Rena Riffel one of the actresses from Showgirls cobbled together an unofficial sequel/remake fan film with some of the original cast. It is technically a film.

The Good: Under the right circumstances (I am thinking psilocybin mushrooms.) this movie can be entertaining. It starts off on the right foot and seems to be almost entertaining with interesting cameos and a Daliesque surreal touch but one quickly realizes it is just meandering from one setpiece to the other with no real rhyme or reason.

To her credit, Rena Riffel is in surprisingly good shape and does her best to work with her um assets. I would actually hold her blameless based on her performance was she not also the writer and director of the film.

The Bad: Amazon currently has a version of this film streaming called Showgirls 2: The Cut which is the original film cut down to 100 minutes from the original 145 minutes. Well, it is a start. The problem is not just length (though that certainly does not help matters) it is that the scenes simply never go anywhere in ways that defy description.

I almost think Showgirls 2 should be shown in Film School as a lesson of how not to shoot a scene, frame a shot, or transition from one scene to another. The entire film is like the first seven minutes of Manos the Hands of Fate with occasional middle-aged topless nudity. The level of filmmaking and storytelling incompetence is simply of the charts.

The Ugly: Rena Riffel is from the Cheri Caffaro school of filmmaking. No matter how old I get nothing more nubile is allowed to appear in the scene. So we have the primary rival/love interest Shelley Michelle playing the Gina Gershon role but looking like Rue Mccallahan in a Golden Girls rerun. People complained that Showgirls 2 was like watching a porn film with all the sex scenes taken out but in all honesty would it have been better if they were left in?

In Conclusion: You can do this kind of movie correctly. Misty Mundae and Seduction Cinema put together a string of these in the early aughts. (The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the String, Spiderbabe etc). Rena Riffel does have a surrealistic touch to her story but she simply should not be allowed to edit or direct film and she needs a strong co-writer to focus her craft. She clearly has talent. Unfortunately, her surreal trip was lost in a deluge of craft errors and poor follow through.