Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) User Reviews

Surprisingly Well Acted But Lacked A Good Story.

[FrancesTheWHORE · 6/10 · 23 December 2004]

This was a movie about the lives of 5 different strippers (Jennifer Tilly, Charlotte Ayanna, Sandra Oh, Daryl Hannah & Sheila Kelley). Supposedly, the original script was intended to be built around Kelley's character "Stormy", but as the actresses got to know their own characters and grow into them, the script was adapted to feature all 5. In fact, I think the Stormy character had the least amount of screen time. It was probably the worst story of the five. None of the five stories stuck out as being great. All were average, thus, the movie was average.

The five co-stars here are all good actresses in my opinion, and that saved the movie from the horrible movie it could have been. One thing I did like about the movie is that the actresses that played strippers were not afraid to play strippers. I mean that in a couple of different ways. First, and in many ways most importantly, they were not afraid to be nude on camera. Usually, even in B-movies, there is one actress who wants to play the character but does not want to do what is necessary to play the character. Lets face it, we watch this movie because it is about strippers, and therefore, we expect to see them strip! The second point I want to make here is that the actresses did their homework as far as how the stripper routines work. They obviously took a class or studied on their own the art of "working the pole" and lap-dances, etc. This gives the movie credibility. Not one of the girls looked out of place dancing in the nude. If I was grading this purely on the striptease portion of this movie, it would get a 10. Pretty good stuff.

Unfortunately, this movie is being graded as a whole, and as far as the plots go, they are not quite up to par. The actresses went as far as they could with the given material and more often than not, the movie dragged on, despite the acting, itself, being quite good. I've just recently noticed Sandra Oh and I have to say, she is a pretty versatile and darn good actress.

Jennifer Tilly also stepped up a bit as the rough, biker chick stripper/dominatrix on the side. She played the most troubled girl at the club, Jo, who had to deal with the fact that she was pregnant, on drugs, etc. Everything that could be wrong with her was wrong with her.

Robert Wisdom also did a great job as the sleazy strip club owner, Eddie. His character was strong and was the guy who kept the girls in line at work.

Overall, this was a pretty average story, despite how well the girls and rest of the cast did. I have a feeling a different cast would have made a complete mockery of the movie. As it is, I give it a 6 of 10.

T&A - get over it

[MarshallStax · 6/10 · 22 September 2002]

"Dancing at the Blue Iguana" is an interesting film that flies in the face of modern film convention. Instead of flashy editing with hot chicks looking like Motley Crue's "Girls Girls Girls" video, we are given shots in this film that defy the glossy norms of MTV era quick cuts. In particular, one intense scene near the end between Sandra Oh and Kristin Bauer runs what must be an uninterrupted five minutes. This helps create both a feeling of intimacy with the characters and a sense of reality, that we are watching real people. Some plot lines go nowhere or do not resolve. Several characters seem to have no reason to exist in story terms, but not everyone's life out in the real world has a neat, three-act structure. There is involving drama, inspired comedy (Daryl Hannah at the foster parent agency and Jennifer Tilly in a dominatrix session) and a sweetness to some scenes that is refreshing. In the end, the creative folks behind this film apparently wanted to present strippers in a light generally unseen before on film. The filmmakers do not judge, but simply give a window on the worlds of these women. It worked for me; "Dancing at the the Blue Iguana" was a modest artistic success.

Why do we find reality cinema surprising and often somewhat uncomfortable?

[bbhlthph · 7/10 · 22 March 2006]

I found this a strange film to watch for the first time, as the principal characters all gave me the impression that I was watching a social documentary showing the real lives of real strippers, even though I knew these characters were being played by half a dozen well known actresses who had presumably learned to strip just for this film. I was expecting a fictional story which involved them all to develop, but this never happened. Ultimately this mystery was partly solved in the final credit sequences which explain that the film's characters were developed during a series of "improvisational workshops" in which all the principal members of the cast participated. (I understand that the DVD includes additional extras which usefully expand these explanations, but I have not seen these.) This unusual, but in my opinion largely successful, approach has generated a great deal of controversy among the users of IMDb as fifty comments on this film, ranging from highly enthusiastic to extremely critical, have so far been posted. Viewer ratings are widely spread through the whole range from 1 to 10, and show that the film is most highly regarded by young women whilst it has least appeal for young men.

I am not clear whether the cast were assembled for the first such workshop in time to contribute to the decision to locate most of the action for this film in a Los Angeles strip club. There have been many films such as "Steamed" or "First Wives Club" that largely comprise dialogue between a group of women; usually with the link that they all attended the same school or college at some time in the past, and clearly almost any venue where women characteristically meet together could be used for a film of this type. If this decision was made by the film's promoters before the cast list was assembled, it would be interesting to know the reason for it - the average age of a successful actress is very different from that of the typical pulchritudinous 18 to 25 year olds who most frequently perform in these clubs. Another problem is that all the principal characters are, for obvious dramatic reasons, shown as somewhat dysfunctional. In practice I am sure that many of the performers in strip clubs are perfectly normal, if somewhat uninhibited, local housewives who find that an occasional session 'at the club' provides an easy way for them to keep fit which not only saves the costs of belonging to a health club but in addition enables them to make a little money through part time earnings. Since the operator of the Blue Iguana is shown as a somewhat unpleasant character this singularity is easily explained, but the film might have been more credible if it had been planned as a true documentary rather than a pseudo documentary. If on the other hand the strip club venue was selected by the chosen cast at their first workshop we can have much more fun considering why this was their choice. I recall a comment by one reviewer after seeing the film "Striptease' that Demi Moore made stripping seem like an Olympic sport. A psychologist might tell us that most women have the occasional urge to flaunt their charms in this rather blatant way but are held back by propriety, and so an opportunity to do so in the guise of another character would be very appealing; a casting director might point out that a successful role in such a part could provide cast members with a career plus which would significantly increase the probability of landing other very rewarding parts in the future; a health consultant might simply comment that playing such a physically demanding role would clearly be very beneficial to any actress whose recent work had left her a little jaded; a marketing consultant might comment that any film featuring strippers can be counted on to generate a lot of interest; and a gossip columnist might unkindly associate this choice of part with an attempt to recover lost youth. We can easily postulate several other possible motives for the choice - my point here is simply to note that a film structured to provide so much food for thought is challenging enough to have the potential to be a very good film, whether it finally succeeds is a matter of individual judgement.

What is the viewer left with after watching this film? Certainly some exceptionally well rounded characters very competently played by the cast member concerned. On this basis I would rate the film as worth 7 on a 10 point scale, although with less competent acting there might not have been enough 'meat' to warrant a rating of more than 3. Full marks to the cast and Director for creating a number of quite memorable cameos (it would be unfair to single out any individual cast members for special mention although naturally some of the parts are much stronger than others). These cameos make it a rewarding film to watch, and it deserves to have been much more successful than it was. The main weakness is its lack of a coherent storyline and its very inconclusive ending, although I personally believe that both these could have been made much less significant by more effective work on the cutting room floor.

One warning - this film is certainly not a celluloid version of strip club entertainment in the way that, for example, 'Mondo Topless' was. Those whose primarily interest is in the venue should visit a real club and not watch this film. Although it shows plenty of nudity (which often appears rather self-conscious as camera angles almost always limit it to toplessness), and the dancing is extremely well portrayed; this is not presented in the progressive and provocative way that regular visitors to such clubs would probably expect.

Messages in a Bottle

[rrichr · 21 September 2004]

If you're partial to the documentary approach to feature films, Dancing at the Blue Iguana is one you'll want to grab, possibly from your video store's for-sale rack or any bargain bin that it has tumbled into. It's interesting work and is considerably more than the soft-core porn for which it might be mistaken. The film was also an experiment on the part of the director Michael Radford, who began his film career as a documentary film maker. To remain true to his school, Mr. Radford allowed the principal actresses to map out their own back stories and interactions, then filmed the results. Many people seem to feel this process failed. I must disagree as I think it worked very well. The slight raggedness that resulted simply made the film more convincing to me. It's a thinking person's adult film. Viewers looking for a straight-up porn hit should pass. This film is more about people who have faced certain facts and settled into lives along the underbelly of Los Angeles. The fact that some of them happen to strip is merely coincidental.

Dancing at the Blue Iguana takes an MRI-like scan of life in an L.A.-area strip club, clinically sectioning the lives of the dancers and staff of the club, as well as providing interesting vantage points on the various types that patronize it. There's an elderly gentleman who watches the dancers from ten feet away through opera glasses, understanding that the devil is truly in the details, a Russian hit man who may be targeting one of the dancers. There's even a young woman regular, apparently in the same age bracket as the dancers. The overall slant is so detached, so transparent, that one comes away from the film feeling as though almost nothing has happened. A number of questions are asked but not really answered, but life is that way at times.

The entire cast turns in solid performances that simultaneously reveal both the surface and hidden aspects of their characters but the story really zeroes in on the various dancers, all of whom are portrayed with great conviction by several very fine actresses who have really taken the plunge into their roles; Daryl Hannah's wasted, self-deluding Angel and Jennifer Tilly's freaked and superfreaky Jo to mention just two off the top. There are more. But the real depth resides in Canadian actress Sandra Oh's Jasmine whose character, away from the pole, is a gifted poet in deep mourning for the dead end which her life, due to a lack of faith in her gift, is approaching. When Jasmine is finally persuaded to read at a local open-mike event by the owner of the bookstore where the reading takes place, she blows everyone out the door, including the headlining poetess who is touring behind her newly-published collection. But Jasmine can't be happy because her triumph is simply more proof of her, apparently, terminal weakness and lack of belief in herself, as well as the hate of what that lack has made her. It's a heart-rending performance. (You can catch a glimpse of this little-known actress in the beautifully-done Canadian production, The Red Violin, as the wealthy Asian lady who, with her husband, bids on the instrument near the film's climax.)

Dancing at the Blue Iguana also contains what may be the shortest 75-second sequence ever filmed in which Kristin Bauer's Nico, a touring professional stripper and porn star, whose anticipated guest performance comprises one the film's wispy back stories, takes the stage. The regular dancers all tend to mime various stages of sexual involvement as part of their individual routines; no such nonsense for Nico. When she confronts the hooting, cash-brandishing, SRO crowd, she operates behind a calm, Apsara smile that might have floated off a wall frieze at Angkor Wat. Nico is obviously the girl who really does this stuff for a living. If you were a fan of the great 80's group, Echo and the Bunnymen, as I was, you'll never hear their hit, 'Lips Like Sugar' quite the same way after Nico works with it. Hard to believe that Ms. Bauer is the same lady who played Jerry Seinfeld's entirely mainstream girl du jour in the 'Man Hands' episode, but it is. Her opening at the Blue Iguana is also set up by one of the most unexpected scene-to-scene jumps that I've ever witnessed. Nico's tough as nails but later, in a touching scene with Jasmine, the girl behind the woman comes out. If you find a VHS copy of this very engrossing movie, (It's probably available as a DVD.) you may want to have it duplicated to provide a backup when you finally wear out the tape under Nico's scene.

I did not inhale.

[lastliberal · 6/10 · 29 September 2007]

It is amazing what you come across at 2am when you have trouble sleeping. The fact that this film is directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino) is an indication that it might be more than just a T & A film. It is, after all, about pole dancers at a strip club.

Yes, it is loaded with T & A. Charlotte Ayanna (Jawbreaker) dances in just a thong. TV regular Kristin Bauer (Everybody Loves Raymond, Just Shhot Me) goes even further. Even at 40, Daryl Hannah shows her stuff and it is hot stuff, indeed. Just a photograph in Mike Myer's hands in So I Married an Axe Murderer, Shiela Kelley practiced at many bikini bars before she showed her stuff here. Even Grey's Anatomy's Sandra Oh gives us her first notable skin scenes. Lastly, Jennifer Tilly is un-Bound, and gives a show to remember.

If they gave an Academy Award for this category, it would be Breast Picture, hands down.

But, there is more. This is not Showgirls. There is actually a handful of stories going on as we examine the lives off the stage. Sandra Oh gives a super performance. I wasn't too thrill by Daryl Hannah as she acted as if she had an IQ of 30. Jennifer Tilly was just plain impressive and well worth the time.

The Dramas of Some Strip-Dancers in a Night-club Called Blue Iguana

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 1 September 2003]

The dramas of some strip-dancers in a nightclub called Blue Iguana are the theme of this movie. Angel (Daryl Hannah) is a dancer wishing to adopt a child. Stormy (Sheila Kelley) is a dancer with a secret with her brother Sully (Elias Koteas). Jasmine (Sandra Oh) is a poetess who fells in love with Dennis (Chris Hogan). Jo (Jennifer Tilly) is a dancer who became pregnant and Jessie (Charlotte Ayanna) is a woman fighting to survive in Hollywood. The link between them is the fact that they dance at Blue Iguana, a strip-club managed by Eddie (Robert Wisdom).

This movie is not a bad movie, but the shallow dramas of each dancer are not enough to support the story in a higher level. A woman who decides to work as a strip-dancer certainly has had some trouble in her past (or present). The viewer has a chance to see beautiful breasts, butts and naked bodies of many beautiful actresses, especially Charlotte Ayanna, Sheila Kelley and Daryl Hannah. The fat of Jennifer Tilly is justified since her character is pregnant. On the DVD, the director Michael Radford explains that when he joined the actors and actresses, there was no screenplay. The cast developed each character and this type of creative activity seems to be very unique. Further, on DVD there is a documentary directed by Daryl Hannah showing how she developed the character of Angel that is worthwhile. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Divas do Blue Iguana" ("Divas of the Blue Iguana")

A script is an important thing

[hall895 · 4/10 · 7 August 2014]

Dancing at the Blue Iguana is a movie which comes out of an improvisation workshop. Director Michael Radford allowed the members of his cast to develop their own characters, their own story lines and dialogue. Then Radford tied all that together into some semblance of a script and started shooting. Well, he tried to tie it together anyway. But unsurprisingly the end product is pretty much a complete mess. We follow the stories of a handful of strippers. They dance at the Blue Iguana but what is going on in their lives when they're not writhing around on stage having dollar bills tossed in their general direction? All the clichéd roles are here. We get to know the smart stripper. And the dumb stripper. And the underage stripper. And the pregnant stripper. And the stripper who's in an incestuous relationship with her brother. OK, maybe that last one isn't much of a cliché. Happily we spend very little time exploring that particular storyline because that would surely make for rather uncomfortable viewing. Does anything in the movie make for entertaining viewing? Not really. None of the various story lines are particularly compelling on their own and when you add them all up the pieces never fit. It never comes together, the whole movie is so unfocused. There's a bizarre subplot about a Russian assassin thrown in for no particular reason. No, his presence does not make any sense whatsoever. Nothing much in the film does. If there is any star, so to speak, in this ensemble piece it is Daryl Hannah. She plays the dumb one. Her story resolves around her attempts to become a foster mother. Suffice to say she's not really cut out for that gig. Sandra Oh makes a bit of an impression playing the smart one, a stripper poet. The rest of the cast, and the rest of the characters, are quite forgettable. This was an interesting experiment in movie making. But ultimately not an interesting movie.

Sexy, swaggering, saucy, silly sluts slink & sashay for psyche stunted, stupid, slobbering studs

[helpless_dancer · 7/10 · 4 September 2004]

I liked this strange, erotic look into the backstage lives of dancing doxies and their crazed, wasted lives. Although some of these girls are way past their prime they still look good in a g-string. These pathetic losers are all tied up in their own personal bondage ranging from drugs, unwanted pregnancies, aspirations of future glory or loving husbands to one solid, down home, deeply embedded case of total, unrestrained dumbass. The boys running the dance hall were most assuredly not members of the local church choir: in fact, the boss was one sweet Hitler. He kept his dancers under his thumb with a balance of cool and meanness designed to keep them filling he house and not making one of their own.

Represents a movie first: introspective sleaze!

[moonspinner55 · 5/10 · 31 October 2002]

Daryl Hannah is so adept at playing spacy little cupcakes that it's hard to discern at first whether she's doing anything new or challenging in "Dancing at the Blue Iguana". Her character, Angel--as with ALL the characters in the film--is half-realized and indifferently treated by the director, yet Hannah pulls off one amazing moment in the movie: Angel is almost arrested by a friendly cop who stops to take her picture but finds marijuana in her car. It's just a throwaway moment for the filmmakers, who don't allow the sequence to lead anywhere, but Daryl is dead-on here in her impersonation of a child-like waif who seems to make a conscious decision to use her ditzy naivete to her advantage. She broke my heart! Also good: Sandra Oh as would-be poetess Jasmine and Jennifer Tilly as a hard-partying stripper who roars through her day until she's out of gas. The film rambles, it has no shape, it has many embarrassing and/or awkward moments, and it's filled with disgusting language. But there are some thoughtful, sad passages that strive to "reveal" something about the seamy side of life which maybe we as moviegoers might not have seen before. I found something like "Smithereens" to be more truthful, but I did find "Iguana" to be intriguing on a minor level. ** from ****

Was this movie improvised?--I could not tell

[rlcsljo · 6/10 · 28 January 2002]

If this movie was improvised, more directors should use improvisation (or these actresses) more often. The depth of detail of the presentation and the cogent story line are way above the usually linear lines of many "mainstream" movies. Daryl Hannah stands out not only for her luscious body (at age 40!), but also for pulling off a naive innocence that was greatly contrasted by the "world weariness" of younger actresses. This movie is a complete delight visually, as well as its characterizations. I can't believe only 7 theaters would book this movie for one week! The nudity alone should have sparked much more interest.

A hot mess.

[CriticsVoiceVideo · 3/10 · 11 February 2022]

Like others have already noted, there are some good moments here and an awesome late 1990s/early 2K vibe. Somewhere in this story is an epic stripper film begging to be remade. Some of the casting here is off and from what I understand it sounds like the actors were given too much free reign and too much improve was used. I liked the ending and some of the characters themselves but it all was executed too poorly and unorganized and way too boring for that long running time. A missed opportunity, unfortunately.

Extremely sexy and sad film

[seandchoi · 10/10 · 23 February 2002]

Upon first impression, Dancing at the Blue Iguana might appear to be just another "T and A movie," like Showgirls. After all, isn't Dancing at the Blue Iguana about strippers and "pole dancers," and doesn't it contain copious amounts of female nudity, just like Showgirls? Yes, on both of these counts. However, merely to conclude from this that Dancing at the Blue Iguana is just another "skin flick" is mistaken, and misses the fact that there is something much deeper going on here. This is more a film about the troubles and unrealized hopes of its characters (who happen to work in a strip club), rather than about their bodies. In short, there is a sadness, poignancy, and desperation, which exists at the heart of Dancing at the Blue Iguana, which gives it a dramatic power not found (nor attempted) in a superficially similar film like Showgirls (which, arguably, just is a "T and A movie").

This film was directed by Michael Radford, who is most famous for his work on Il Postino. The script and the characters in the film grew out of an improvisational workshop which Radford conducted with his lead actors. They each had to research their characters and come up with a storyline for them. Although the acting done in the film is improvised, it sounds polished and believable, and gives the film a raw, edgy feel. The actors for the most part create interesting and sympathetic characters. I'll mention two characters that I liked most. First, Darryl Hannah plays "Angel," a character who is naive and innocent at heart, even though she's a stripper. There is a scene in the film in which she gets herself arrested by a cop, and how she gets arrested I will not disclose, but suffice it to say that it is ironic, funny, and sad. Second, Sandra Oh plays "Jasmine," a stripper who is secretly a poet at heart. She regularly attends a poetry reading and at one of those meetings, she gets involved with its organizer. He thinks that she is a great poet, and perhaps can even get published. She initially has reservations about their relationship, because she is a stripper, and she fears that he won't accept her because of that. He assures her that it doesn't bother him. Skipping forward, there is a scene between them which is my favorite in the film. He decides to visit the club where Jasmine works ("Blue Iguana") after she repeatedly failed to return his calls (and why she doesn't do so is wisely left understated by the film). She comes out and does one of her dance routines. He sees her for the first time for who she really is, a stripper. And although he doesn't say a word, his expression tells all: I do not approve of that. The sound track for this scene is Moby's song "Porcelain," and it feels like it was written specially for this scene. During the song's refrain ("So this is goodbye..."), he eventually gets up and leaves, obviously full of disappointment. Meanwhile, Jasmine continues her dance to a crowd of cheering audience, and although her face might remain expressionless, her eyes betray her true emotion: during her pole dance, tears flow down her cheeks. That scene really stayed with me for some time after the film ended. The girls that work at "Blue Iguana" are strippers, but they're people, too. And just like the rest of us, they seek true love, but are often left disappointed, and they have hopes and ambitions, which they often do not follow through. Watching Dancing at the Blue Iguana, I was reminded of a beautiful point that Roger Ebert made in his (print) review of Sid and Nancy, back in 1986: "If a movie can illuminate the lives of other people who share this planet with us and show us not only how different they are but, how even so, they share the same dreams and hurts, then it deserves to be called great." Dancing at the Blue Iguana is such a film, and it deserves to be called great.

Enough T&A To Keep You Interested

[knight_armour · 7/10 · 26 November 2005]

The main selling point of this movie is sex. There aren't any hardcore sex scenes but there's enough nudity (hardly anything below the waist, though) to boost your interest every 10 minutes as the show loses its momentum from one strip scene to another. The girls come off as quite sweet but their lives are a mess. The story is quite difficult to follow with many loose ends but you realize after a while that it doesn't really matter what exactly is going on as this movie tries to depict things as close to reality as possible. There is no real plot to any of it. Charlotte Ayanna, to me, is the prettiest stripper with the most perfect tits while the others seem to have different 'assets' they capitalize on. Overall, if you like girls, you'd be willing to make an exception for this one. Otherwise, your time is better spent watching an exciting B-grade monster movie.

I prefer the documentary

[davek28 · 5/10 · 2 April 2003]

I really wanted to like this film as I'd already seen the accompanying documentary on UK television. However, the documentary is far better than the film itself. There was also a series called "G-String Divas" shown on Channel 5 - made by HBO I think - about real life strippers, which was obviously far more realistic as well as far more entertaining than this limp 2-hour improv.

My question is - if there is already so much documentary material around about the real thing, then why make this film at all? What does it add?

I never thought I'd fast-forward through a film with so much naked flesh in it. It just shows how uninteresting Dancing at the Blue Iguana really is. The only character with any depth is the club owner.

The soundtrack was also poor in that the dialogue was frequently masked by background noise. Subtitles would have been useful.

Also, the music used for the stage performances was disappointing. The TV series "G-String Divas" used music that was more appropriate to stripping and made me turn the volume up. The music in this film seemed inappropriate.

Finally, on a single positive note - a special mention for Kristin Bauer who appears at the end with a great acting performance (despite her mistake), as well as a daring on-stage appearance. I don't recall seeing her in anything else, but maybe sexy blondes don't get too many challenging roles. Go girl!

Dave K

Some really great moments

[penniah · 23 March 2003]

I was really impressed with Sandra Oh's performance in this film. Everything else aside, she was brilliant. Her Jasmine is a sensitive poet who has real potential, but she's stuck in the sex trade and, like so many real women in that position, is afraid of trying to get out. The familiar, even when it is terrible, is easier to face than the unknown. (For the same reason, battered women stay with the men who beat them.) She takes some steps, but when her boss cruelly tells her that her job is who she is, she gives up. Any tentative confidence she felt is gone. Later, she dances in front of her new boyfriend, not so much to say "This is who I am" but "How could you possibly love me?" It's like, on some level, she was daring him to still love her. How the audience, and especially her boyfriend, could not see how this was killing her soul, is not amazing, but typical - people see what they want to, and in a strip bar, it's T&A, not despair or no self esteem. Her poetry, beautiful, but so cynical and sad, also show the despair she feels. Having been in a damaging relationship, I can say for a fact that Sandra Oh's performance is right on the mark - from trying to be tough, to pushing away someone who cares (while hoping he'll "save" you by continuing to believe in you), to sharing feelings of despair with someone in the same boat - this is all so completely real.

I was also struck by Daryl Hannah's performance as the airhead, always high, who has hopes that are completely out of reach because her lifestyle is sabotaging her dreams. Without two brain cells to rub together, I wonder what she did with all that money...

Jennifer Tilly's character was good too, and provided some fairly uncomfortable humour - when she ripped into the happy mom at the doctor's office, saying "I'm gonna have this baby, and he's gonna sell your kid drugs in the schoolyard" I laughed, but it had an Oh-my-gawd-she's-completely-off-her-rocker quality to it. Plus her scene as the dominatrix trying to deal with her battered and boozed up stripper friend was priceless.

Yeah, the plot (what plot?) goes nowhere, but watch it as a very realistic few days in the emotional lives of some very sad characters.

Getting them out for the lads

[trimmerb1234 · 6/10 · 15 January 2008]

Like other reviewers I found an obvious comparison with "Show Girls" yet as others have pointed out Dancing at the Blue Iguana deals in depth with lives off-stage with clothes (mainly) on. It lacks the brash trashiness for one thing at least however it is not entirely different.

One wonders if the rapt attention and generous opinions of earnest followers of movies-as-art are due to a large extent to their being male and the sight of a (40 year old believe it or not) topless Daryl Hannah squirming at the foot of a pole dancing pole not to mention the less star-studded plentiful T & A very much on display. Do female reviewers similarly share this elevated view of the director's intentions?

I would have been more comfortable had the nudity been implied and for example the focus had been more on the club audience's attitudes - that after all is the point - nudity as such is meaningless. Sandra Oh remained mainly clothed throughout yet scored a more memorable dramatic impact.

Can it look real at all?

[johnhenrik · 2/10 · 28 March 2008]

I've been to so many adult establishments. I've had friends who were strippers. Why does Hollywood always show a strip joint that doesn't look real? The only real aspect to this movie's depiction of a strip joint is the great discomfort a huge percentage of people have in these places. The strippers I've known are not living great lives, but the job's a job. They go and do it, handle whatever trivial sh** comes along, and that's it. I don't know if all strippers are also prostitutes, at least occasionally, but my friends were. I remember one saying she had to do it with the man who owned the building the club was in, that is, if she wanted to work there. I'll admit, it's been years since I've been to one, but this movie looked quite fictional and overacted.

This is why you don't improvise an entire movie

[mrliteral · 3/10 · 18 March 2010]

What a complete and utter mess. Yes, there are interesting characters. Yes, there are good performances. Yes, there are scenes which are compelling in and of themselves. To make the movie equally good and interesting and compelling requires some type of thematic element, a storyline, that will tie everything together. There is none here.

There are scenes with characters behaving in precisely the opposite manner of their previous scene. There are moments and concepts that have nothing to do with anything yet keep popping up and going nowhere. There are ancillary characters who come and go without doing anything or adding to the scenes they show up in. Lousy storytelling.

If the trivia is accurate, and there are enough alternate takes to create ten vastly different movies out of all the footage...how awful must the alternative possibilities be if this is the best one they could come up with? Congratulations, though, on having so many well-known actresses naked in the same movie. That's quite an achievement.

tries not be just another T&A exploitative movie, but it is anyway

[kevjohn · 4/10 · 3 June 2003]

"Blue Iguana" is yet ANOTHER 'serious drama' about a group of females working at a strip club, but fails as nearly every attempt before it has. If the filmmakers claim they set it in a strip club for any other reason than to get some T&A up on the screen, they are lying. There is NO other reason to set a film in a strip club other than for some T&A. As an earlier reviewer noted, they could have set this film in a hospital or restaurant and kept the same characters and storylines. Not that that would be a good thing. "Blue Iguana" features the standard stripper characters as a dozen other strip club movies; the only difference is that they are being portrayed by B-list semi-stars as opposed to C-list nobodys.

As MLDinTN notes, "we got the dumb stripper, the tough/sensitive stripper, the wild stripper, and the young/naive stripper." That's pretty accurate. Then there's the stock stripper movie plot elements: there's the abusive boyfriend(s), the strung-out stripper(s), the gold-digging stripper hoping to meet the Knight-in-White-Armor that will carry her away from all the madness, and the owner who cares far more about making a profit than about the dancers who make the profit for him. Not that all of these characters don't exist in real life, it's just that we've seen them so many times before. MLDinTN also notes, "And none of them do much." I agree so wholeheartedly with that statement that I won't even bother attempting to sum up the "plot" any differently. I've seen at least three different documentaries on strippers that have a hundred times more going on in their lives than the characters in this film. They should have just made another one instead of this weak take on a seedy industry.

Sandra Oh was good as the intellectual stripper. Robert Wisdom was good in his small role as the Blue Iguana's owner. All the other actors are amateurish at best. Jennifer Tilly and Daryl Hannah seemed to be doing impersonations of a manic-depressive Anna Nicole Smith, with Tilly being the manic half and Hannah being the depressive half. Both were ditzy druggies with whiny voices and a total lack of the powers of higher reasoning. None of the other dancers stood out.

Finally, I've been to strip clubs before and I must say that the atmosphere in the Blue Iguana is far too downbeat and moody. Slow music and depressing, lethargic dancers do not mix well. None of the dancers would make more than $10 a night, and the Blue Iguana would be out of business in two weeks. So much for realism.



RATING: 3/10--for doing the same old thing in a somewhat different way.

A haunting, thought-provoking slice of life

[redpanda · 9/10 · 12 January 2002]

OK, so "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" features wall-to-wall naked gyrating women. But don't let that put you off. Despite the subject matter - the lives of five strippers who work in the eponymous club (played by Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Sheila Kelley, Charlotte Ayanna and Sandra Oh) - and the frequent nudity, "Blue Iguana" is not a T&A movie. Rather, it's a compelling insight into the lives of the underclass of Los Angeles, or indeed, any one of the world's major cities.

If your cinematic tastes run to tightly plotted fare where all the loose ends are tied up with a big gift-wrap bow in the last five minutes, you'll probably it find frustrating. But if you can appreciate a film in which some issues are never quite resolved and some questions are never quite answered - just like real life - then you may be seduced by the "Blue Iguana".

The film has been panned by so many critics that I must admit I started watching with some trepidation, expecting to be embarrassed for the actors. But I became so engrossed in the world of the Blue Iguana that I was actually disappointed when the film ended.

Much of the criticism of "Blue Iguana" is based on the fact that it was made without a script. The actors started with only two things: the title of the film and the fact that it was set in a strip club. Everything else, they worked out themselves - their characters, their storylines, and their dialogue - in an intense series of improvisational workshops. This approach may be unconventional, but it gives "Blue Iguana" a freshness and immediacy which is rarely found in mainstream films. As Michael Radford explains, improv relies on nailing the scene in the first take; once it becomes too polished, it loses its sense of realism.

The female cast has been another target for critics - not because they're not superb actors, but because, in their late 30's to early 40s, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly and Sheila Kelley would be too old to work as strippers in LA where beautiful young women exist in a buyer's market. But they bring a depth of sadness to their characters - you can't help wondering where they'll be a few years down the track.

Sandra Oh's performance as Jasmine is a standout. Jasmine leads a double life, stripping on the Blue Iguana stage and secretly writing poetry in the dressing room. After persuading her to read one of her painfully beautiful works at his poetry group Dennis (Chris Hogan) starts to fall in love with her mind. But Jasmine realises the fledgling romance is doomed. In the film's most heartbreaking scene, when Dennis seeks her out at the club, she performs her routine to Moby's "Porcelain" with its haunting refrain "So This is Goodbye". The camera focuses on her face. It's an impassive mask, but her eyes betray incredible sadness. She's wordlessly saying to him, "This is the real me. Do you still want me now?"

Putting aside its improv-based development, "Blue Iguana" succeeds on its own merits. If you want to see a T&A film, rent a copy of "Showgirls". If you want to see a haunting, thought-provoking slice of life, see "Dancing at the Blue Iguana".

ambition of more

[SnoopyStyle · 4/10 · 10 February 2016]

Various women dance at the strip club Blue Iguana. Angel (Daryl Hannah) is desperate to adopt. Jo (Jennifer Tilly) is angry, pregnant and wants an abortion. Jasmine (Sandra Oh) is a poetry writer. Club manager Eddie gets star stripper Nico (Kristin Bauer van Straten). Jessie (Charlotte Ayanna) is the new girl. Stormy (Sheila Kelley) is sleeping with her brother.

Michael Radford is no drive-by B-movie director. This does have ambition of something more compelling than a simple T&A showcase. He has gathered various stripper stories together. They're fine but I don't find any of them that compelling. The movie feels scattered. I wonder if somebody who actually stripped like Diablo Cody would have more compelling stories. At least, her writing might be more interesting.

Seamy and poignant.

[DS95 · 22 October 2004]

I'm going to be brief and succinct. (I have been advised that brevity is not permitted, I have had to pad my comments to satisfy the website rules) I loved this film and all the actress' performances. They made the risky choice of portraying the sleezy world of strippers & stripping.

My sister was a stripper and on many occasions I had to contact her at some of the clubs she worked. These places made my skin crawl, the smells were overpowering. (I will avoid description.) All were located in Southern California near the airport.

Everything in the film was accurate and well represented. However, the corruption was a bit glossed over.

I strongly recommend that everyone who has had a daughter, sister, mother or friend involved in this creepy business, to rent the film and watch it.

Many times in the past, I had tried to discourage her from continuing in this field but her response to me each time was, "Can you make over $1,000 a week at what you do?"

Fortunately, after three breast implants (bigger and better for more tips), and ultimate body breakdown, she has since retired 2 yrs. ago at the age of 52. She still looks good but she has NO Social Security to rely upon. However due to class action suits against the breast implant people she has managed to run a business on the big island in Hawaii.

A lot of decent talent wasted

[Michael_ClarkII · 1/10 · 26 January 2011]

For Fans Of: Strippers?

Date Night: No

Art Factor: None

Fun Factor: None

Emotional Factor: None

Intelligence Required: None

Essential Viewing: No

The Plot: Strippers deal with everyday life

My Take: This was terrible. Bad acting by some decently big names (Sandra Oh, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Kristin Bauer). The script was as boring as you can get. And it's a movie about strippers! I mean, you would think that it would at least be a bit exciting, but oh no, not at all. The direction gave the entire movie a late night skinamax feel that came off as cheesy. I would not recommend this hookers with hearts of gold tale to anyone (unless you are really into seeing name actress nudity).

More Angst than T&A

[maladicta1 · 4/10 · 25 June 2005]

I saw this on cable and would have been sorely disappointed if I had viewed it in a theater. It's not a very satisfying film because it's so monotone and devoid of energy--all strippers are depressed, self-hating junkies who grow more pathetic as they age. Even the facial expressions are frozen in a way that's more typical of 40-something actresses than of silicone-enhanced 20-something dancers.

The movie is ostensibly about strippers, but it's really about five actresses working overtime to create their characters and show that, despite their age, they can take their clothes off with the best of them. It's hard for these well-known TV and movie actresses to submerge themselves in their roles, and apart from Kristin Bauer who plays porn star Nico (an allusion to Warhol's Queen of heroin), none of them really succeeds at it. We're supposed to be applauding them for having the courage to strip bare in front of an audience, but it's clearly an ego trip for these women to show off those personally-trained bodies in which mainstream Hollywood has lamentably lost interest.

What would have been truly courageous, I think, would have been to use talented unknowns in the lead roles, but that too poses the risk of leaving the audience with five characters in search of a coherent storyline.

The problem may be too many story lines that go nowhere--notably, Sandra Oh as a talented poet whose verse is good enough to get her a university fellowship, but who seems not to know it. She meets a college instructor, and there's a flourishing romance, until he realizes how uncomfortable he is with her stripping and bails from the relationship. The break-up is established through a long, mournful scene in which she dances in the club, knowing he's present in the audience. The camera never really strays from her face, which makes for claustrophobia rather than intensity. Another subplot that fizzles involves Daryl Hannah's seeming rendezvous with death in the former of a stalker who sends her expensive presents. What happens when they get together is both ambiguous and anticlimactic. Sheila Kelley's character is so underdeveloped that it could have been omitted it entirely while Jennifer Tilley's repulsive punk dominatrix suggests she's way over her head.

I can't help comparing this film to HBO's plucky "G String Divas," a documentary in which the women were no more likable but far more interesting. A number had university degrees, and several saw themselves as entrepreneurs stashing away cash to beat the system. There was a contemptuous, carnival-like atmosphere in which the men were there to be fleeced and discarded. Some women had kids; some were lesbians; some were bisexual and involved in complicated relationships. At the end of the day, it seemed like a business rather than the sado-masochistic playpen for decaying flesh that "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" makes stripping out to be.

Like mixing whiskey, wine and beer to make one sick dude.

[acearms · 1/10 · 18 November 2003]

I guess when all is said and done, if you're going to portray a sleazy side of life this is the way to do it. It had lots of sex, in various forms, nudity all over, foul mouths by the dozens, murder, greed, and a few other of the deadly sins and should of been given an "X" rating instead of the milder "R" it got. As to the plot, it was about strippers in the night club, Blue Iguana, and their lives on and off stage. The story has a ring of being true to life, but it was hard to follow as the action jumped around so much trying to keep up with a half dozen strippers. Then there's the added feature of an assassin, which seems to be a red herring, thrown in for good measure. This one is kind of like mixing whiskey, wine and beer all in the same evening, which makes for one sick dude. A movie with out any redeeming value.