BURLESQUE 2010
36%
Written and directed by Steve Antin
Starring Christina Aguilera, Cher, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell, Cam Gigandet, Eric Dane
Synopsis
Aspiring small-town singer Ali finds herself quickly leaping from cocktail waitress to lead performer at a burlesque club when she moves to L.A. While club owner Tess spies star potential in Ali, not everyone is happy there’s a new girl in town.
Why We Love It
The How Did This Get Made podcast—Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas’s bi-weekly breakdown of a single and singularly “bad” film—chose Burlesque as the focus of its very first episode. Digging into the musical’s particular brand of badness less than a month after the film was released in late 2010, the hosts wondered whether the movie might have been stronger had the filmmakers gone harder, leaned into its trashiness, and produced something R-rated rather than PG-13. Something a bit more like the so-bad-it’s-revered Showgirls.
With respect to that trio, and with the benefit of nearly a decade’s worth of hindsight, we’re all in on Burlesque precisely because it took the earnest, rosy-eyed PG-13 approach, just like its singular protagonist. There’s something hugely endearing about the wink-free way with which this L.A. dreamer story is told; the way the actors—a game Christina Aguilera as the plucky soft-focus heroine, Ali; Cher as the sassy den mother, Tess; and especially Kristen Bell as the bitchy and territorial rival dancer, Nikki—commit. It means that writer-director Steve Antin’s ludicrous dialogue lands squarely in the zone of memorable camp, as when Stanley Tucci’s Sean asks what “Ali” is short for and, upon hearing the answer, says with a Cheshire-cat–like grin: “Alice? Well, welcome to Wonderland.”
It’s moments like that for which you entered this darkened club, with its sequins and top hats and come-hither gyrations. And perhaps the most delicious moment comes from Bell’s Nikki when she declares, “I will not be upstaged by some slut with mutant lungs.” And to be fair, when you hear Aguilera belt out the finale, you’ll see the latter part of that insult is not an ill-fitting description.
You also came to hear that voice and the music, of course, and the soundtrack has endured for good reason: just try to resist the urge to shimmy to closing number “Show Me How You Burlesque,” cowritten by Aguilera. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s Cher, though, who runs away with the movie, belting out the Diane Warren–penned ballad “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” in the film’s most somber moment as Tess battles with potentially losing her beloved club. Actress and character merge as the song builds and that deep Cher voice soars. It’s enough to make even a trio of cynical podcasters weep. Or, at least, we would have thought so.