| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Willem Dafoe | ... | Ray Ruby | |
| Bob Hoskins | ... | The Baron | |
| Matthew Modine | ... | Johnie Ruby | |
| Asia Argento | ... | Monroe | |
| Riccardo Scamarcio | ... | Doctor Steven | |
| Sylvia Miles | ... | Lilian Murray | |
| Roy Dotrice | ... | Jay | |
| Joe Cortese | ... | Danny Cash | |
| Burt Young | ... | Murray | |
| Stefania Rocca | ... | Debby | |
| Bianca Balti | ... | Adrian | |
| Shanyn Leigh | ... | Dolle | |
|
|
Lou Doillon | ... | Lola |
|
|
Frankie Cee | ... | Luigi |
| Pras Michel | ... | Sandman | |
A screwball comedy centered on a Manhattan go-go dancing club, where a financial struggle between the owner, his accountant and his silent partner brother threatens the business's future.
I was excited to see this brilliant ensemble cast do their magic in Go Go Tales, but I found myself unexpectedly being served a gourmet hot-dog from actors who are capable of playing much more challenging characters. What makes a gourmet hot-dog anyways? Is it made from the lips and a**holes of kobe beef? Is there fois gras blended in with the questionable parts of top-shelf carcasses? I don't think it is an accident that right in the middle of Go Go Tales there is a scene with gourmet hot dogs being cooked the gourmet way - in microwave ovens, while the beautiful go-go dancers cook themselves in a faulty tanning bed.
This isn't to say that Go Go Tales was badly acted - it was very well acted for what it is - a meandering vignette of a failing second rate strip joint; a metaphor for how even the most exotic dreams and aspirations are subject to blandness like anything else. It plays out like a cabaret stage production, a bit of aimless vaudeville salted with an undercurrent of subtle existential humming: A page out of Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Like 'Chinese Bookie', this film offered more pleasure for me in the thinking about it afterward than it was to watch.
I can't say that I didn't like it, and I can't say that I want to watch it again. But for a gourmet hot-dog, it wasn't terrible; it was mostly just a regular hot-dog made with some Hoskins, Dafoe and a dash of Modine, thrown in a microwave and served in the bawdy atmosphere of a musky strip club.