Also entertaining is its 90s slant on 80s fashion. Though leather jackets, mini-skirt-over-leggings, and enormous hair bows keep popping up, it's all done up quite 90210.
Of additional value are the songs, all of them presumably pre-Like a Virgin --that single's release being the movie's culminating moment. None of these songs are recognizable and strangely feel like slightly altered versions of other hits, just adding to the film's weird fun.
Madonna look-alike Terumi Matthews' performance is just ok, not nearly as laughable as Showgirls' Berkley precisely because Matthews (unlike Berkley) is expected as Madonna to play it over the top. In terms of delivery and conviction, she really owns it. Nevertheless, much as Matthews gyrates, mimicking trade mark moves by rote, she can't shake the performance free of an underlying current of sadness, the sort that Hollywood Boulevard Michael Jackson impersonators sometimes evoke.
Wendie Malik as Camille Barbone, Madonna's first manager, is a refreshing presence, somewhat legitimizing the film's acting calibre, even as she finds herself awash in bizarre trappings of cloying dykiness --the short, spiky, jet-black hair, the jealous treatment of Madonna, the dogs!-- though that's part of the movie's good fun and charm, of course.
All in all, Innocence Lost delivers light, silly fun, and would make top choice for perfectly mindless entertainment.
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