Dancing At The Blue Iguana Review

Dancing At The Blue Iguana
The Blue Iguana is a strip club, where 'the girls' consider abortion, poetry, adoption, and mad men...

by Matthew Turner |
Published on
Release Date:

21 Jun 2002

Running Time:

123 minutes

Certificate:

18

Original Title:

Dancing At The Blue Iguana

For Dancing At The Blue Iguana, director Michael Bradford (whose eclectic filmography also includes 1984 and Il Postino) has assembled an impressive cast, each of whom work-shopped their characters intensively before collaborating with the director on the screenplay.

Unfortunately, it's the haphazard nature of the various plot developments that really lets the film down. For example, Jessie is by far the most fascinating character and yet we learn very little about her after the film's opening scene. Similarly, a sub-plot involving a Russian hit man builds promisingly but fails to pay off, and you're left wondering how much better the film might have been if they'd paid a real screenwriter to knock it into shape.

That said, it's not without humour and it has its moments. Hannah, Tilly and Oh in particular are all superb, while Charlotte Ayanna is definitely one to watch.

An ‘interesting failure’. It’s well-acted by an extremely game cast, but sadly suffers from a lack of direction and a decent screenplay.
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