‘The Last Showgirl’ review: Pamela Anderson’s performance powers film
She did not win at the awards ceremony on Jan. 5, but Pamela Anderson was deserving of her nomination for a Golden Globe for her starring turn in “The Last Showgirl.”
Getting a wide release this week, the sometimes sweet, often heartbreaking Gia Coppola-directed film sees Anderson portraying a 57-year-old who has spent more than three decades in Las Vegas as a performer in the once-revered rhinestones-and-feathers revue “Le Razzle Dazzle.”
The former “Baywatch” and “Barb Wire” star and Playboy cover girl — one of the biggest sex symbols of the mid-1990s — bares a different side of herself in “The Last Showgirl.” As Shelly, she still cuts that impressive figure, but, as we see in close-ups, her face and hands bare the perfectly appropriate imperfections of a woman approaching her 60s.
We meet her in an audition that takes place deeper in the story. Her age? She’s 36, she says, before admitting that she lied because she’s nervous — she’s really, er, 42, but this show’s theater is so large no one will be able to tell.
The screenplay by Kate Gersten then takes us back a couple of weeks. We see Shelly spend time with pal Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) — a former castmate and current casino cocktail waitress with a gambling problem — and younger coworkers Jodie (Kiernan Shipka, “Sweethearts”) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song, “Love Accidentally”).
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They’re having a girls’ night after Shelly’s date with a new beau fell through, but Jodie has invited Eddie (a long-haired Dave Bautista, “The Killer’s Game”), the show’s quiet and supportive stage manager because, even if she doesn’t know it, she’s desperate for Shelly and Eddie to be her de facto parents.
Eddie is the bringer of bad news: The show is ending in two weeks due to declining attendance and the new owners of the casino that hosts it wanting to do something different.
This is shocking to Shelly, who reveres “Le Razzle Dazzle” like no other, touting its ties to the glamorous Parisian culture of yesteryear.
She loves being on that stage, being bathed in that light. She always has — as has been reflected in major life decisions she’s made.
The way to pump up the show, Shelly tells Jodie, is the casino putting more money into its promotion.
“I mean, our press shots are from the early ’80s,” Shelly says.
“Aren’t you in some of those shots?” Jodie replies.
Barely making ends meet as it is and now facing this even more uncertain future, Shelly also is desperate to reconnect with her daughter, Hanna (Billie Lourd, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”). (Hannah shows up at Shelly’s door after receiving a voicemail Shelly leaves as food she’s cooking begins to burn, setting off a smoke detector that Shelly soon puts in the toilet. This woman has it only so together.)
At first, their relationship seems, at worst, a little frosty, Hannah addressing her mother as “Shelly.” Their time together is awkward, but Shelly encourages Hannah to follow her dream of becoming a photographer. While Hannah declines her mother’s offer to stay for dinner, she soon returns to spend more time with her.
She even, unbeknownst to Shelly, goes to see the show. However, she lays into her mother afterward backstage, quickly unpacking a lot of the baggage she’s been carrying pertaining to her less-than-stellar upbringing.
This scene, crying out for more nuance, is “The Last Showgirl” at its clumsiest. However, later emotionally charged scenes — including a dinner out shared by Shelly and Eddie — are executed at least somewhat more effectively.
The relatively brief film is largely engaging but sometimes frustrating work by Coppola (“Mainstream”), granddaughter of filmmaking great Francis Ford Coppola, and Gersten, the wife of Gia Coppola’s cousin Matthew Shire. (Gersten’s unproduced play “Body of Work” — which she was inspired to write after seeing the showgirl review “Jubilee!” in Las Vegas in 2013 — served as the basis for her screenplay.) Filmed over a mere 18 days in Las Vegas, with numerous scenes shot at the Rio Hotel and Casino, lending it a meaningful air of authenticity, “The Last Showgirl” boasts a lot of handheld camera work that gives it both kinetic and frazzled qualities.
Curtis, an Academy Award winner for her supporting work in 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” carved out four days in her packed schedule to appear in “The Last Showgirl,” and her scenes are impactful. Her Annette is both a firecracker and, underneath that, a terrified woman who never planned for a future.
The film, though, is carried by Anderson, who, even while not exhibiting a great amount of range, impresses like never before. Coppola became interested in casting her after seeing the 2023 documentary “Pamela, A Love Story,” and it proved to be an inspired choice, the actress pouring what you imagine are real-life vulnerabilities and fears into her performance.
Eventually, “The Last Showgirl” returns to that audition scene, in which, after showing her stuff, the director running the affair (Jason Schwartzman) gives her the cold, hard, not-so-kind truth, at least as he sees it.
Thankfully, the film leaves us and, more importantly, Shelly, with at least one more moment in which she, dressed in those feathers and rhinestones, graces the stage and bathes in the light she has loved for so long.
‘The Last Showgirl’
Where: Theaters.
When: Jan. 10.
Rated: R for language and nudity.
Runtime: 1 hour, 25 minutes.
Stars (of four): 2.5.