5.2 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.6 |
After losing custody of her daughter, Erin Grant takes a job stripping to raise money for an appeal. She's soon embroiled in multiple complications, as her ex tries to use her job against her, a corrupt congressman becomes infatuated with her, various parties try to blackmail the congressman, and the elected official's handlers consider drastic means to remove Erin from their boss's life.
Starring: Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds, Armand Assante, Ving Rhames, Robert PatrickErotic | 100% |
Comedy | 33% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 2.0
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Both Castillian & Latin tracks French track dubbed in Quebec
English SDH, French, German SDH, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 0.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Striptease ended two careers. The first was Demi Moore's as a box office superstar. When you're paid $12 million for a film, and its opening weekend gross is about the same amount, your stock in Hollywood falls very far, very fast. Even though Striptease ultimately made money overseas, Moore's career hit a wall, and her next film, Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane, had to be a box office smash to wipe away the memory. It didn't even come close. The second career that fell victim to Striptease's belly flop was that of writer-director Andrew Bergman, whose resume lists such classics as Blazing Saddles, Fletch and The In-Laws (both the good original and the bad remake). Bergman's previous directing credits include one bona fide comedy classic, The Freshman, and two minor gems, Honeymoon in Vegas and It Could Happen to You. But after the stench left by Striptease, he would get only one more shot at the director's chair: 2000's Isn't She Great, about which the less said, the better. Has time revealed hidden virtues in Bergman's and Moore's collaboration? In a word, no. Striptease is such a disaster that it can't even match the campy "so bad it's good" entertainment value of Showgirls, with which it shares bad taste and bare flesh but not much else. Where Showgirls tried to be shocking (and failed), Striptease tried to be . . . well, that's part of the problem. The film suffers from an ongoing identity crisis. Is it a farce about politics? A satire about divorce? A grotesque tale about a strip club? A dark and dangerous crime story à la Pulp Fiction? A sentimental yarn about the bond between a mother and her daughter? It's all well and good to say, "We offer all those things!", but then you'd better have a director who's a master at balancing and calibrating shifts in tone and performance. Andrew Bergman couldn't do it (though, for reasons discussed below, it may not have been entirely his fault).
Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a capable rendering of Striptease's tricky photography by Stephen Goldblatt (The Help). The blacks are strong and solid, which is crucial for this film, because so many scenes occur either at night or in the darkness of the Eager Beaver. The performances by the dancers are full of flashing lights and changing colors, and these are likely areas for motion artifacts, but I didn't see any. (Extracting a good still image of a dancer in motion is a whole different subject.) Colors are appropriately vibrant and saturated in the club, and the Florida pastels stand out in elegant locale's like Dilbeck's hotel suite and the boat where he meets Erin. More prosaic places like the courtroom where Erin loses custody have a more muted palette. Fine detail is evident throughout the frame. The grain patterns appear natural and well-controlled, without evidence of high-frequency filtering, artificial sharpening or other inappropriate digital tampering. Although the film has been issued on a BD-25, no compression artifacts were observed.
The most aggressive use of the surround channels on Striptease's 5.1 track, presented in DTS- HD MA, occurs in the Eager Beaver, where the sound mixers have done a superb job of recreating the enveloping, thumping, overpumped club sound for the musical selections that accompany the various dances. Erin prefers songs by Annie Lennox, either from her solo career or with the Eurythmics, and the bass extension in these scenes is more powerful than on the actual albums (but without the boomy effect of a cheap stereo system). Compare the sound mix to the scene where Erin rehearses to a tape in her apartment (and is interrupted by a visit from Lt. Garcia), and the difference in the mix is immediately obvious. Since I happen to like many of these songs ("Little Bird", "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", "Money Can't Buy It"), these rejiggered mixes were a saving grace that helped get me through a film I would have turned off long before the end, if not for the requirement of writing a review. The remainder of the mix is solid and serviceable, with clear dialogue, a general sense of ambiance and almost unnoticeable incidental scoring by Howard Shore. If you're at all like me, by the second half of the film, you'll be praying for more scenes at the Eager Beaver, not to see more skin, but because you'd much rather hear songs than the increasingly ludicrous dialogue, especially whenever Burt Reynolds appears.
Striptease could be the most technically stellar Blu-ray known to man, and that wouldn't change the fact that it's an atrocious movie. It won six Razzie awards and was a finalist for worst film of the Nineties, losing to Warner's Wild, Wild West (a close call, in my opinion). If you're one of Ms. Moore's die-hard fans and just can't wait to see a great deal of her topless, then by all means grab this disc. Everyone else should keep a safe distance.
Alternate Cover 2015 Reissue
1995
Unrated Director’s Cut
2013
1968
Limited Edition
1998
2010
2019
Uncut & uncensored
1974
2002
1979
1982
1974
1969
1975
2020
Remastered Edition
1974
Unrated Edition
2010
2015
1963
1978
Eager Beavers / Room Service Sex
1975