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.
