Striptease, brilliantly written by Carl Hiassen, is a scabrously funny, sometimes bloody hilarious tale of criminal low-lifes eking out an existence in the sunshine state. The film version sucks. Well, that's not entirely fair, but what its screenwriter-director Andrew Bergman (Honeymoon In Vegas) has failed to comprehend when adapting Hiassen's blackly comic prose, is that what is riotously funny on the page doesn't necessarily transfer with the same effect to the screen.
The story remains fundamentally intact. Moore is Erin Grant, formerly a secretary at the FBI, who loses her job on account of her hubbie's criminal record and is forced to work as a stripper in order to raise the money to pay for an appeal to regain custody of her daughter (played by Moore's real-life offspring Rumer Willis) from the wheelchair-stealing scumbag.
One night at the club - the subtly named Eager Beaver - the champagne-fuelled antics of lecherous (and incognito) congressman David S. Dilbeck (Reynolds) sets off a chain reaction that culminates in murder and blackmail, as Dilbeck's advisors attempt to disentangle the perverted politico from any potentially damaging scandal, but at the same time indulge his pathetic infatuation with Erin, an obsession that leads to an aide stealing the lint from her dryer at the laundrette so that he can, well, you really don't wanna know.
For the record, you get to see Moore's much touted breasts a total of three times, but they, like the rest of the flesh on display, are strangely unerotic. And as appealing and attractive as Moore is, her gift is not comedy, and the script doesn't help matters. In fact, the only characters to retain any of their literary counterparts' amusing traits are Reynolds' sleazoid congressman and Rhames' bouncer who, between looking out for Erin, is engaged in various insurance scams of the stuffing-cockroaches-in-yoghurt cartons-and-suing-the-manufacturers variety. Fans of the book will be pleased that most of its highlights remain intact - including Dilbeck covering himself with Vaseline - but overall this is at best patchy, and, more damagingly, not funny.