christopher-underwood Good old Abel Ferrara, his films are never the easiest to watch and no easier to review. Always worth watching, however, and this little number had completely passed me by before I picked up an Italian DVD, with an English audio track fortunately. A failing strip/lap dance joint a lost lottery ticket and owners threatening to foreclose. Sounds a little uninspiring but the Ferrara is not interested in some glossy, happy go lucky enterprise and what we get here is a very well shot, edited and filmed impression of more behind the scenes than anything else. Most of the guys are aged, bossy and freeloading as the ship goes down while all the nubile ladies give it their all, because that's what they do. Asia Argento is very impressive, as is the ever dependable William Dafoe in the lead. Roy Dotrice was a nice surprise and even Bob Hoskins is fine. Sylvia Miles, who I haven't seen since Paul Morrissey's Heat, is a little over the top but just about does the job. More than a little echo here of Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie, but nothing wrong with that.

xxxneon If you speak French, you'll find looking for inconsistencies in the subtitles more entertaining than what's going on on screen. For any good film, I take well over a page of notes. For this one, I took less than half a page. 'Nuff said? Perhaps not. How can a film with Willem Dafoe as a strip club owner, and with Bob Hoskins, be boring? Well, this one is. How disappointing. Dafoe does more acting (and we learn more about his character) in the first scene of To Live and Die in L.A. than he does in this entire film. Dafoe as Ray Ruby, owner of the Paradise Club; Hoskins as the Baron (greeter / maître d' / bouncer); and Matthew Modine as Johnnie Ruby, the Salon King are nothing special here. On the other hand, Sylvia Miles as landlady Lilian Murray; and Stefania Rocca as Debby, a dancer who is also a screenwriter, are decent and believable.As to the plot, there isn't much of one—nothing out of the ordinary happens here, nothing unexpected. There's no more conflict, no more actual heartfelt emotion at Ray's Paradise Club than there is at your own neighbourhood bar or pool hall. When a hundred seconds of plot are stretched out to a hundred minutes of film, that is NOT 'a good thing.' Likewise when any five minutes of a film look essentially the same as any other five minutes.The sole exception is Selena Khoo as Leila, a dancer who is also an accomplished pianist. She should've been on screen a half hour more than she was. Oh well, maybe in the sequel. Oh, whom am I kidding? There isn't going to be a sequel. God, I hope not.

Argemaluco I am losing my faith in director Abel Ferrara.He made a lot of excellent movies (for example:Bad Lieutenant or Ms.45) with very little resources.But,he's not having luck with his most recent works.New Rose Hotel and R Xmas were let downs on his career but ,in spite of being failed experiments, they were interesting. But,more recently,Mary and,now,Go Go Tales resulted to be two craps.Go Go Tales is the lowest point in Ferrara's career.The story is uninteresting and boring.Willem Dafoe and Bob Hoskins are two excellent actors but they do what they can with the poor screenplay.I am very disappointed with this movie and I can't believe that a talented director like Ferrara was behind this mess.By my point of view,Go Go Tales is a crappy film and a waste of time.I honestly hope Ferrara will back to his best on his next film to make us forget of this pathetic movie.

barsel-1 I do not remember for a long time seeing such a bad film. The story itself might not have been very bad for a quirky comedy, however, nothing in this movie is done anywhere near well. The dialogs are God awful, not funny and hardly understandable. The girls do not even know how to move or dance, so there was no visual pleasure either. It was hectic, very plain, extremely predictable and as I said the whole idea of doing something for the soul and being one big nice warm family within the simple strip club, would not have been so bad had it been done tastefully with humor, the real one, not the one that is based on curse words alone. In short it was boring, badly developed, not funny at all, did not make much sense until the very end, where the viewer sort of understands what was going on, who are those people and how they related to each other and that sort of things. I know that I have said here that it was predictable and at the same time did not make much sense,I fully understand that this is controversial; however that exactly how it was - partly this partly that - imagine!