Burlesque (2010)

It’s time to bust out your clear plastic stripper heels, grab your gay bestie, and get thee to a theater near you to see Burlesque. This campy ride, starring Christina Aguilera and Cher (the Queen of All Camp) is chock-full of spangled fringy costumes, mile-long fake lashes, and unintentional hilarity. What more could you ask for?

I hope not a cogent story, as you certainly won’t find it here. The flimsy plot has an Iowa waitress of indeterminate age and backstory named Ali (Aguilera) fleeing her dull, one-horse town on a Greyhound bus to the bright lights of Los Angeles. No sooner do her five-inch patent leather heels hit the ground than she discovers the Burlesque Lounge. She falls instantly in love with the glitz and glamour of the corseted dancing girls, led by club owner and one-time performer Tess (Cher), and pleads for a job.

She gets one–as a waitress–by sheer pluck, commences flirting with a guy-linered but taken bartender named Jack (Cam Gigandet) and secretly learns all the dance moves. It’s a good thing, too, because as luck would have it one of the dancers (Dancing With the Stars’ Julianna Hough) has to drop out of the show. Ali’s sudden rise to stardom–if dancing in a soon-to-be-foreclosed joint on the Strip counts as stardom–rubs the show’s reigning diva, bitchy bad girl Nikki (Kristen Bell with dark hair, so you know she’s tough), the wrong way. Especially when her real estate magnate boyfriend Marcus (Eric Dane) turns into Ali’s most devoted stage door Johnny, while simultaneously trying to steal the club out from under Tess.

Sound sufficiently ridiculous for you? Good, then you’ll love the way that writer-director Steven Antin shoots everything–from the club’s inexplicably Weimar era décor to Ali’s allegedly rundown apartment–in doting soft focus. I would blame it on his need to distract from what I assume was once Cher’s face and is currently an expressionist watercolor signed in the lower left hand corner by some Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. But there’s only one diversion that could manage to do that. And that’s when the original Half Breed takes to the stage in an out-of-nowhere scene to belt out “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” with a wink and a nod to her remarkable five-decade career.

If there’s hardship to be found for naïve ingénues in the City of Angels, you won’t see a hint of it in Antin’s Burlesque. (Try the equally camp-tastic Showgirls instead.) Being snubbed by the other girls only endears Ali to Tess and club manager Sean (Stanley Tucci). Nikki’s attempt at sabotage ends in Ali busting out her trademark Xtina growl and becoming a headliner. Even when Ali’s apartment is burgled, it’s as simple as moving in with sweet, Kentucky Jack.

Indeed, everything for Ali seems to come up roses, except for her nipples, which you also won’t see. As something of a burlesque devotee myself, I’ve seen shows ranging from retro to raunchy to arty and subversive. What I have never seen is a burlesque show rated PG-13, as this one is. The closest this film comes to resembling actual burlesque is a delightfully cheeky number starring the club’s ticket-taker Alexis (Alan Cumming, still wearing his Emcee costume and makeup from 1998’s Cabaret on Broadway). Otherwise, the Pussycat Dolls-inspired (the watered-down burlesque group’s founder is the director’s big sister) numbers are mostly chaste and danced to music that is mostly forgettable.

It’s a shame, really. A better opportunity to reprise those ass-less chaps from Aguilera’s “Dirrty” music video or the see-through thong catsuit from Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” may never present itself.

Still, what this movie lacks in deft directing and skillful screenwriting, it makes up for in sheer low-camp value. Over-the-top costumes? Check. Drag queen makeup? Check. Awesomely bad acting? Check twice. It’s the stuff that drinking-game dreams are made of. Add to the recipe a series of terrifically catty one-liners like Nikki calling Ali “some slut with mutant lungs” or Ali’s quip that Nikki is so beautiful that you’d hardly know she was really a man, and Burlesque is just enjoyable enough to make you forget it’s not actually good.