Striptease

This is a very misunderstood film. It's not some sleaze erotic thriller but a comedy drama. It can be off putting when you go from joke to a serious part of the story, and there might be a little too much stripping but it's not that bad. The story has murder mystery and and full belly laughs and a few terrific one liners. If it was made by the Coens everyone would call it a masterpiece. You shouldn't watch this film expecting something serious, just go with it and see how much fun you have. Burt Reynolds gives the performance of his career, Ving Rhames as good as ever, and there's Robert Patrick playing a loser so with out morals he steals wheelchairs for a living. Films like this, that are neither one thing or the other, are always uneven. But the director/writer manages to pull it off. It could be better but it could have been a whole lot worse.

Striptease (1996) is a movie that I recently watched for the first time in a long time on Tubi. The storyline follows a mother going through a divorce who loses visitation of her daughter due to a lack of steady income. She becomes a stripper to build the security she needs to get her daughter back and establish herself. The stripper life will throw her a series of twists and turns.

This movie is directed by Andrew Bergman (It Could Happen to You) and stars Demi Moore (Ghost), Burt Reynolds (Deliverance), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2), Paul Guilfoyle (Airforce One) and Armand Assante (Gotti).

This has an absolutely awesome cast that was well selected and fit the storyline perfectly. The strippers were gorgeous. Burt Reynolds was hilarious, and the Vaseline scene is legendary. There's some good humor throughout the movie as Ving Rhames was fantastic and the anaconda scene always makes me crack up. The soundtrack was solid also. The storyline was fairly straightforward but did a great job of depicting strippers as ordinary people with ordinary problems.

Overall, this gets way more criticism than it should. This is entertaining and worth a watch. I would score this a 7/10 and recommend seeing it once.

The novel "Striptease" was everything you could ask for in a novel. The movie is the complete opposite and a major disappointment for me. I thought Demi was a decent choice and also applauded the casting of Robert Patrick as her good-for-nothing ex, and Ving Rhames as a bodyguard at the club.

However the entire thing ended up being a mess, and I can only hope I can erase the image of Burt Reynolds in his boxers, smothered with petroleum jelly from head to toe, from my mind.

Read the book!!

Demi Moore reinvented herself from a hot cutsie girl in the 80's to a powerful sexy woman in the 90's. She used that power to create some pretty dynamic roles at the time, G.I Jane being her best effort.

Striptease is not the greatest movie but it does have enough highlights to make it an ok watch. Rhames is enjoyable as is Reynolds.

Moore however owns the screen on this one. She had power at this time and she knew it and was happy to wield it. Good for her.

Different people watching this film see different movies. T and A people see naked and think great. The rest see this as crap. Except for Carl Hiaasen fans. I'm one of the latter and since I've read the book I can't help but see this as an attack on political corruption and environmental folly.

After losing her job as an office clerk for the FBI due to her ex-husbands recent criminal proclivities, Erin Grant (Demi Moore) resorts to stripping to support herself and her daughter as well as the high legal fees of a custody battle with said ex. When a corrupt congressman takes a lewd interest in Erin, she is drawn into a profitable but dangerous situation involving Florida sugar growers.

Become a Carl Hiaasen fan and see this movie for what it really is and delegate the stripper bar to just the setting, much as a spaceship is in a sci-fi movie. It's not a great movie, but when can see the content rather than the package, it is worth far more than a 4.3. Burt Reynolds character is worth much more than that. It deserves a 5 or so. I give it a 6 just for Hiaasen.