| Taxi Dancers (1993) |
| Directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane. Starring Sonny Landham,Brittany McCrenna, Josie Boyd, and Nick Aero |
| Some movies are a lot like wine. Even though they are mediocre to downright dreadful a couple of years after they're made, you get the feeling that in twenty years they might just mature into something special. Taxi Dancers is one of those movies. In twenty years it will either be an early 90's trash time capsule, or an unpalatable bottle of vinegar. |
| This is allegedly a 'shocking docu-drama about life on the edge', but is in fact a highly implausable late night erotic thriller with a bad premise and even worse acting. The movie is about Billie, an innocent country girl who applies for a job as a taxi dancer at The Shark Club (surely a name like this can't be good for business). |
| She gets the job, and becomes mixed up with a bunch of seedy characters. The clubs owner Miguelito is an ex-cop who enjoys spying on the girls with video cameras. Diamond Jim takes out Taxi Dancers 'most cliche character award'. He's a wealthy Texan cowboy who hangs out in the dive of a club for some unknown reason. He's also on the run from an asian crime gang called 'The Yellow Dragons' (I'm not making this up!). Billie also falls in love with a pizza boy who looks like he just walked out of a Pauly Shore lookalike contest. |
| Everything pointed to turning this thing off after ten minutes, but for some reason I could not turn away. I don't like to use the term 'so bad it's good', since most people who say that are usually referring to a movie that actually is good. Maybe it was the entertainment I derived from watching Brittany Murphy (who played Billie) trying and failing to pull off emotions that were clearly way beyond her somewhat limited acting ability. |
| Or maybe it was figuring out where I knew several of the actors from. It only took a couple of minutes to recognise Sonny Landham as the guy from Predator, but almost the entire movie to recognise the pizza guyfrom his role in Frankenhooker.Or maybe it was the shamelessly contrived plot of this movie.It may not be great, it may not even be good. But Taxi Dancers is 88 minutes of mediocre entertainment with one dimensional characters, and even a couple of un-impressive stunts.That's the recipe for your average Hollywood blockbuster. |
| Entertainment : 2 out of 4 |
| Watchability : 1.5 out of 4 |
| Overall : 1.75 out of 4 |
| Reviewed by Blake |