Striptease (1996)

Based on Carl Hiaasen's satirical novel, Striptease tells the story of Erin (Demi Moore), who has just gotten a divorce from Darrell (Robert Patrick), the sleazy ex-con she foolishly married. However, the judge's memories of Darrell's days as a football hero win him custody of their daughter, and Erin, concerned for her child's safety, is determined to fight the decision. Erin has just lost her position as a secretary for the FBI, so, to cover her legal bills, she takes a job as an exotic dancer at a strip club called the Eager Beaver. While she has no experience taking off her clothes in front of an audience, Erin soon makes friends with the fellow dancers and finds a protector in the club's burly but good-hearted bouncer, Shad (Ving Rhames). She also makes a few fans among the regulars at the club, most notably David Dillbeck (Burt Reynolds), a drunken lout with a bottomless appetite for sleaze – who also happens to be a conservative congressman with ties to right-wing religious groups. One of Erin's admirers snaps a photo of her with the congressman when a brawl breaks out at the club, and he suggests that it would make fine blackmail material. However, when the man with the photo turns up dead, Erin discovers that Dillbeck's people play a bit rougher than she expected. The home video version of Striptease contains two minutes of footage that was clipped from the theatrical release in order to win the film an R rating.

Synopsis by Mark Deming, Allmovie.com

Critics were eager to label Striptease the same kind of colossal skin-flick failure as Showgirls, in part because both employed the same save-face marketing strategy: call it a lampoon of eroticism, rather than eroticism proper, and try to win a sympathetic ear. But there's legitimate mirth to be found in this first film adaptation of a novel by Carl Hiaasen, whose series of outlandish takes on Florida political corruption have won him a popular following. The corrupt politician du jour is a sex-crazed congressman played by Burt Reynolds, whose daffy breeziness is a dead giveaway of the film's true lighthearted nature. Striptease courted buzz for its promise to show more of Demi Moore than anyone but Bruce Willis had ever seen, and her artfully sculpted and toned flesh is indeed on display. But it's hard to call this film anything but a comedy, what with a politician who fills his cowboy boots with Vaseline prior to speeches, a bodyguard (Ving Rhames) who practices inserting cockroaches into "unopened" yogurt containers as lawsuit fodder, and a drunken ex-husband (played with liberating abandon by Robert Patrick) who stumbles around on dog tranquilizers with a golf club lashed to his broken arm as a makeshift splint. Add Paul Guilfoyle and Armand Assante and the result is an ensemble of humorous personalities who can barely contain themselves from winking at the audience. Striptease may indeed have gone awry as the concept traveled from boardroom to multiplex, but the results are watchable because of the film's surprisingly nutty charm.

Synopsis by Derek Armstrong, Allmovie.com

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