Pamela Anderson Stuns in ‘The Last Showgirl’, but Jamie Lee Curtis Steals the Spotlight

Wafting around the edges of minor movies and forgettable TV shows since her initial impact in 1987 in the series Baywatch, fading Canadian beauty Pamela Anderson finds a worthy vehicle at last in The Last Showgirl, a heartbreaking study of the dreams and disappointments of a disillusioned, washed-up Las Vegas sex symbol who is forced to find a way to survive after the glamour and glitter of a superficial town change and its phony show business lure changes along with it. Sensitively directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Gia Coppola, it’s a film about a familiar subject, but with a heart as big as the Vegas strip and a style of its own that holds interest from start to finish.

When a show about sequins, sex and sass called Razzle Dazzle closes after 38 years, leaving the long-established cast of aging showgirls jobless, broke and desperate, the girls who had the customers panting for more find themselves unprepared for future employment. Razzle Dazzle was the last of the old-time tits and ass revues that made Vegas vulgarity famous. Replaced by country and western showcases and circus spectaculars, the shows that used to glamorize the neon on hotel marquees forced the scantily clad high kickers to remove the false eyelashes, toss their G-strings and look for new ways to earn a living. For veteran stripper Shelly (Pamela Anderson), it’s a traumatic shift from one of the oldest show-biz professions, about which much is assumed and little is known. Shelly devoted herself for three decades to what she called a career, realizing that she neglected everything else. Now, it’s too late to start over.     

The film’s biggest surprise is none other than Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelly’s friend Annette, who was once a showgirl too, until she saw the writing on the wall, gave up the rhinestones and the splits and went to work as a cocktail waitress in a casino. Lately, she’s been taking on extra shifts, showering in locker rooms and sleeping in her car. Before it comes to that, Shelly has to humiliate herself auditioning for crude, indifferent slobs who reject her as a leftover from the old days who is no longer young enough or pretty enough to titillate today’s younger audiences while they pass the time between blackjack tables. Whatever she had when she was fresh and beautiful is gone. The qualities she has now are no longer in demand. The movie catalogs her woes without dwelling too heavily on her tears, dramatizing at the same time the continuing affection of an old-flame stage manager (Dave Bautista, in one of his rare chances to show some onscreen tenderness), the support of fellow showgirls, and the threats of an unhappy, resentful daughter (Billie Lourd) who feels Shelly was a coward for keeping her professional life a secret for so many years.

While Shelly deals with the issues of sexism, aging, and parenting failures, the dramatic folds in the observant screenplay by Kate Gersten serve as a worthy showcase for the largely misused and/or overlooked talents of Pamela Anderson. It probably isn’t a great idea to provide Jamie Lee Curtis with a supporting role so colorful it allows her to steal every scene in The Last Showgirl from every actor in the cast.  Unrecognizable with a butch red haircut, bags under her eyes, and wrinkles for days, she chews a lot of asbestos. But Ms. Anderson still holds her own, beautiful with or without makeup, warts and all, in what is less of a comeback than a startling new beginning, hopefully promising more to come.