Dancing at the Blue Iguana
Added 11/5/2009
The movie was OK. The plot was a little lame, but what can you do with a bunch of emotionally distraught strippers, other than a horror flick. Beware that there is ample gratuitous nudity to go around (it is a movie about strippers set largely at a strip club. I bought the movie because I had heard about how Darryl Hannah and the other actresses had worked so hard to learn how to perform exotic dances and was curious to see how accurate this information was. I have always thought Darryl Hannah has portrayed some very sexy women in quite a few of her previous roles. In this one she plays an extraordinarily dumb blonde, and she does that quite well, but her dancing wasn't anything special. She definitely had been working out as evidenced by virually no body fat to be seen anywhere. This made her look too anorexic. Jennifer Tilley usually plays the dumb role, but in "Dancing" she played the self centered "[...]", and she over acted. Shiela Kelley and Sandra Oh provided reasonable performances and their dancing looked more professional than Darryl Hannah's or Jennifer Tilley's dancing. If you want to actually see quality exotic dancing (of which the name implies)performed by a woman with the stereotypical female physique, then you have to rely on Charlotte Ayanna and the brief appearance of Kristin Bauer. Charlotte plays a young woman of relative intelligence(of who's age is questioned when she auditions for the job at the Blue Iguanna to ensure that she is of age) and is somewhat naive due to her youth. She connects up with and then later gets physically abused by a friend (regular customer) of Darryl Hannahs. Everything said, Charlotte's acting was ok, but let's face it, she has a voluptuous body and knows how to use it. Kristin Bauer is hired to dance at the Blue Iguana late in the movie, because one of the dancer's gets killed and one gets fired. This was probably the best decision made by the casting director. Kristin plays a seasoned dancer and when she first shows up on screen, you think she has a snobbish, stuck-up attitude with the the other regular dancers. A little later you discover that she has a serious drug problem when Darryl walks in on her shooting up heroin between her toes. At that point, you realize that she was very stoned when she first appeared. In her brief, appearance she proves to be friendly and the best thing is that she has a killer body and dances like she made a living stripping before she started acting. The price of the movie was worth seeing her dance.
Finally, if you would like to see Kristin Bauer and Charlotte Ayanna, two very sexy beautiful women, strip, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, I would wait until I was bored and maybe spend the 90 minutes or so killin time watching this movie.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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An unforgettable movie
Added 1/2/2009
I have to say this movie is one of my favorite movies. The sense of loneleiness and longing, and the realness this movies portrays in the lives of five strippers, has made this movie one of the best, especially dealing with sensitive topics such as stripping and stereotyping and cliches. The acting and character portrayals were all phenomenal, and the soundtrack alone was awesome. You felt you knew these five women, and that you could perhaps be their friend. You are sucked into the world of stripping and the atmosphere at the Blue Iguana. The gritty scenes and glimpses of L.A., and the lifestyles of the girls, adds to the realism of their lives, the loneliness, the struggles, and the reality of a life most people wonder about. I am very picky about the movies I like. I cannot stand it when movies depict for instance, poverty, but then the furnishings that the so-called "poor" character has, are not realistic. This movie does none of that. There is no shallowness, no overly glamorous shots or depictions. This movie draws you into a world like no other, and you find yourself going back.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Horrid and pointless !
Added 8/27/2008
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen ! Here are just a few of my criticisms:
3 of the actresses (Hannah, Oh, and Kelley) are way too old to be strippers. Yes they look great for their ages, but they wouldn't cut it in a strip club with younger competition.
Strippers aren't all a mess, and yet the ones at this club are. Very unrealistic.
No men would go to a strip club where the women kept their bottoms on.
There is no point to this movie other than to apparently moralize that stripping is a depressing road to nowhere. But the reality is that many strippers are pretty much normal women with normal lives, they can just make a heck of a lot more money stripping than doing anything else.
AVOID !
2 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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Ghastly...
Added 8/21/2008
Horrible in every respect. Acting, direction, cinematography, writing, you name it you got it. This is now the age of losers get a chance at fame, the bigger the loser the better.
1 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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A powerful and gritty film
Added 2/17/2007
Dancing at the Blue Iguana is a film whose story was developed during a five month improvisational workshop run by director Michael Radford. The story centers around the Blue Iguana, your average seedy strip club, this one located in a faceless semi industrial area of the San Fernando valley part of LA. Each of the lead actors developed their own character and storyline based on their own research.
There have been a couple of pathetic attempts by Hollywood to make a film about the world of strip clubs, namely Showgirls and Demi Moore's abhorrent Striptease, but both of those failed miserably. Dancing at the Blue Iguana succeeds brilliantly. Walk into any average to below average strip club in America and you'll find stories that are not at all dissimilar from the stories developed by the Blue Iguana's five dancers all played brilliantly by Darryl Hannah, Sandra Oh, Charlotte Ayanna, Shiela Kelly and Jennifer Tilly.
The one story element that sticks out as overly fantastic is that of the Russian hit man played by Vladimir Mashkov, who because his target is being held for questioning by the FBI, is stuck in a hotel next to the club and falls for Darryl Hannah's character because he sees her smoking outside the club all the time. But if you replace the Russian hit man with a businessman stuck in town for a week, it still makes sense, and would be much more believable.
Robert Wisdom who plays Eddie, the owner of the club, and W. Earl Brown, who plays his right hand man, Bobby, both do a wonderful job in this movie as well. The camera work is first rate and does a fantastic job capturing the unscripted dialogue. The soundtrack is perfect for this film.
In a film about strip clubs, there is obviously going to be a lot of nudity, and there is in this film, but it's not done in a gratuitous way. The film also kind of starts and ends in the middle of each of the stories, but that's the way life is. I found it just absolutely compelling and rivetting, in some sense the way a train wreck is compelling, because some of these young women have real problems. I could have watched another two hours of this, though, it was that good.
Strip clubs are often sad places, both the dancers and their customers often have melancholy tales. Dancing at the Blue Iguana captures that milieu in a perfectly downbeat way. Really a great film.
8 out of 8 people found this helpful.
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Dancing at the Blue Iguana
Added 11/5/2009
The movie was OK. The plot was a little lame, but what can you do with a bunch of emotionally distraught strippers, other than a horror flick. Beware that there is ample gratuitous nudity to go around (it is a movie about strippers set largely at a strip club. I bought the movie because I had heard about how Darryl Hannah and the other actresses had worked so hard to learn how to perform exotic dances and was curious to see how accurate this information was. I have always thought Darryl Hannah has portrayed some very sexy women in quite a few of her previous roles. In this one she plays an extraordinarily dumb blonde, and she does that quite well, but her dancing wasn't anything special. She definitely had been working out as evidenced by virually no body fat to be seen anywhere. This made her look too anorexic. Jennifer Tilley usually plays the dumb role, but in "Dancing" she played the self centered "[...]", and she over acted. Shiela Kelley and Sandra Oh provided reasonable performances and their dancing looked more professional than Darryl Hannah's or Jennifer Tilley's dancing. If you want to actually see quality exotic dancing (of which the name implies)performed by a woman with the stereotypical female physique, then you have to rely on Charlotte Ayanna and the brief appearance of Kristin Bauer. Charlotte plays a young woman of relative intelligence(of who's age is questioned when she auditions for the job at the Blue Iguanna to ensure that she is of age) and is somewhat naive due to her youth. She connects up with and then later gets physically abused by a friend (regular customer) of Darryl Hannahs. Everything said, Charlotte's acting was ok, but let's face it, she has a voluptuous body and knows how to use it. Kristin Bauer is hired to dance at the Blue Iguana late in the movie, because one of the dancer's gets killed and one gets fired. This was probably the best decision made by the casting director. Kristin plays a seasoned dancer and when she first shows up on screen, you think she has a snobbish, stuck-up attitude with the the other regular dancers. A little later you discover that she has a serious drug problem when Darryl walks in on her shooting up heroin between her toes. At that point, you realize that she was very stoned when she first appeared. In her brief, appearance she proves to be friendly and the best thing is that she has a killer body and dances like she made a living stripping before she started acting. The price of the movie was worth seeing her dance.
Finally, if you would like to see Kristin Bauer and Charlotte Ayanna, two very sexy beautiful women, strip, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, I would wait until I was bored and maybe spend the 90 minutes or so killin time watching this movie.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
An unforgettable movie
Added 1/2/2009
I have to say this movie is one of my favorite movies. The sense of loneleiness and longing, and the realness this movies portrays in the lives of five strippers, has made this movie one of the best, especially dealing with sensitive topics such as stripping and stereotyping and cliches. The acting and character portrayals were all phenomenal, and the soundtrack alone was awesome. You felt you knew these five women, and that you could perhaps be their friend. You are sucked into the world of stripping and the atmosphere at the Blue Iguana. The gritty scenes and glimpses of L.A., and the lifestyles of the girls, adds to the realism of their lives, the loneliness, the struggles, and the reality of a life most people wonder about. I am very picky about the movies I like. I cannot stand it when movies depict for instance, poverty, but then the furnishings that the so-called "poor" character has, are not realistic. This movie does none of that. There is no shallowness, no overly glamorous shots or depictions. This movie draws you into a world like no other, and you find yourself going back.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Horrid and pointless !
Added 8/27/2008
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen ! Here are just a few of my criticisms:
3 of the actresses (Hannah, Oh, and Kelley) are way too old to be strippers. Yes they look great for their ages, but they wouldn't cut it in a strip club with younger competition.
Strippers aren't all a mess, and yet the ones at this club are. Very unrealistic.
No men would go to a strip club where the women kept their bottoms on.
There is no point to this movie other than to apparently moralize that stripping is a depressing road to nowhere. But the reality is that many strippers are pretty much normal women with normal lives, they can just make a heck of a lot more money stripping than doing anything else.
AVOID !
2 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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