10 Hated Movie Performances That Were Secretly Genius

After years spent unfairly dismissed as one of the worst films of all time, Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls tends to provoke one of two reactions these days. The first, maintaining continuity with contemporary assessments, is that the film remains the low point of Verhoeven's Hollywood career - a vein, overbudgeted erotic thriller with tacky performances and unintentionally comedic sex scenes that attempted to break Elizabeth Berkley's "Girl Next Door" image post-Saved by the Bell. The other skews more towards the lines of ironic enjoyment, that Showgirls is a camp masterpiece precisely because it's so exaggerated - almost like it's The Room's flashy, nineties sibling.

Both of these assessments - as is ever the baffling case with Verhoeven's films - feel like they miss the point of Showgirls, a film that is just as spiritually in keeping with the director's satirical impulses as his earlier films RoboCop and Total Recall. It's a film about artifice and the "performance" of the American dream, situated in the nation's artificial paradise of Las Vegas, and centred around a young woman desperate to be a part of that image. Its exaggerated features are by design, with Verhoeven taking one big look at showbiz and inviting us to gawk at how ridiculous and dishonest it all truly is.

All of this is exemplified by the character of Nomi Malone. Berkley faithfully conveys Verhoeven's vision with a performance of pure chaos and energy as Nomi, an aspiring dancer who envelops herself in the city of sin and endeavours to make fantasy reality, developing a sexually charged rivalry with Gina Gershon's Cristal Connors as she gyrates her way to the top - and into the weirdly fringed face of Kyle MacLachlan.

It's a performance of boundless energy, with Berkley not only impressing in Showgirls' many dance sequences, but also in its long-lampooned moments of dialogue. Nomi is impulsive, excitable, and determined, all qualities that Berkely conveys and in a way that feels appropriately reflective of Verhoeven's all-out directing style. It's a totally original performance, and one that deserves to be appraised without an ironic asterisk.