Inside Out 2019 Review: You Don’t Nomi

Anyone interested in figuring out how constructive and meaningful film criticism works will get a nifty primer from Jeffrey McHale’s equally playful and intelligent documentary You Don’t Nomi, a deep dive into the tremendous amounts of love and hate that have been directed at Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 “masterpiece of shit” Showgirls.

For those born after 1995 or anyone that’s been living under a rock since the Clinton administration, Showgirls was one of the most notoriously panned movies of all time upon its release. Written by sleaze-master Joe Eszterhas in his second major collaboration with Verhoeven (following the critically contentious, but wildly successful Basic Instinct), Showgirls was the biggest budgeted film to expressly court the otherwise dreaded NC-17 rating. It was the story of Nomi Malone (played by Elizabeth Berkley, in a performance that’s as hotly debated as anything else in the film) leaving her small town life behind to become a Vegas showgirl. Its particular blend of seediness, camp, and dodgy morals was an invitation for many film critics to sharpen their knives and crack their whips, but in recently thanks to queer readings of the material, auteurist reappraisals that parse Verhoeven’s sense of style and storytelling, and a reclaiming of the enterprise’s outlandishness, Showgirls has found many new lives. But despite Showgirls meaning a lot of different things to a lot of different people, many detractors – who point to the film’s jarring tonal shifts and the material’s callous handling of violence against women and minorities as major sticking points – remain unconvinced.

Not too long into You Don’t Nomi – which features interview subjects speaking exclusively over archival materials and clips – Toronto critic Adam Nayman (who perhaps wrote the most definitive and scholarly defense of Verhoeven’s work to date) says that many of the pans of Showgirls from the late 90s were examples of lazy, catty criticism, and he’s not entirely wrong. You Don’t Nomi examines how virtually any film can be broken down into parts and examined passionately and thoughtfully in positive and negative lights, deftly showing potentially uninitiated viewers the differences between good and bad criticism. For everyone that found empowerment in Nomi’s rise to fame or any critic who believes Verhoeven to be in top form here as an elegant stylist, there are just as many who find Showgirls morally reprehensible and artistically dubious.

McHale balances all sides of the unique arguments for and against Showgirls and turns You Don’t Nomi into an entertaining and stimulating look at how real and honest criticism works when readers and viewers are willing to step beyond the superficial. It’s also the best visual examination yet of a film that one couldn’t explain to the unfamiliar without sounding like they’re drunk or going through some sort of mental breakdown. Leave your inhibitions at the door, indeed.

You Don’t Nomi screens at the 2019 Inside Out LGBT Film Festival on Friday, May 31st at 9:15pm.