HOUSE OF GUCCI-SHOWGIRLS MEETS VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

House Of Gucci is to Showgirls what Showgirls was to Valley Of The Dolls. It’s awful, hypnotically awful. It does for the fashion industry what Cats did for the feline community. That it was directed by Ridley Scott goes to show that the gods have feet of clay.  For the first ten minutes I thought I was watching a Mel Brooks' spoof.

Adam Driver’s performance is that of a somnambulist trying to avoid bumping into the furniture. Jared Leto’s character has the gravitas of an Adam West era Batman Villain, with a wardrobe to match. Jeremy Irons comes across as an ex SS General who escaped to Paraguay in 1945. As for Al Pacino, it would seem he was asked to reprise his role in Dick Tracy, only broader. Which brings me to Lady Gaga; her status as a gay icon can only be enhanced by a performance so full of kitsch that it belongs in a John Waters film from the 70s, her dialogue would not be out of place in Mommie Dearest.

Any critique has to address the accents. They are uniformly  as excruciating as Dick Van Dyke’s cockney in Mary Poppins.

The soundtrack, consisting of mostly Donna Summer, bludgeons home the era in which the film is set and the attempts to show a world of glamour and style are cack handed and as subtle as a Bernard Manning joke. 

So terrible is the whole enterprise that I wouldn’t be surprised if it were used as a method of torture on suspected members of Islamic State.