Striptease, whatever lubricious thoughts the advance buzz may have induced, is not about Demi Moore's getting naked--well, almost naked. She does, several times, and she is, as we used to say when we gathered out back of the corncrib to discuss family values, a damned handsome woman.
But so far as this movie is concerned, not a very sexy one. Writer-director Andrew Bergman presents her as a rather abstract object of desire. He wants us to know that his mind, at least, is not in the gutter--can't afford to waste time there, given the amount of busy work he has to attend. This largely derives from the complexities of novelist Carl Hiaasen's quite faithfully followed plot. It places Moore's character, a stripper named Erin Grant, in a nasty fight to regain custody of her daughter from a creepy former spouse, which in turn involves her in the murderous machinations of corrupt rich people.
That's a great pile of narrative nuts and bolts and, dutifully sorting through it, Bergman forgets to explain persuasively what a nice girl like Erin--smart, spunky and a former FBI employee--is doing in a dump called the Eager Beaver, taking off her clothes for a living. Worse, he misses Hiaasen's strength: setting mean-funny characters spinning through lowlife milieus. Yes, Burt Reynolds has some dirty, lively moments as a crooked, sex-starved Congressman. But the crazy, nothing-to-lose anarchy of people living below the margin and beyond the fringe is not within Bergman's fastidious reach. --R.S.