Wow, talk about sneaking in under the wire.
At the last minute of 2024, clear out of nowhere, here comes a prestige drama starring Pamela Anderson, of all people. Between this and her upcoming lead performance in the Naked Gun reboot, I’m pleased and astonished to see Anderson making such bold choices for a career comeback. Even better, The Last Showgirl also features such names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Billie Lourd, and Kiernan Shipka, all under the direction of Gia Coppola. (Yes, another one.)
So, what the hell is this movie and where did it come from? Well, let’s take a look.
To start with, this is a film set and shot in Las Vegas. For those who aren’t familiar, Vegas is a city in perpetual flux. Depending on the decade, the casinos could be hosting kid-friendly attractions and themes to lure in the family crowds, or leaning into the “Sin City” vibe for dollars on drinking and gambling. Hell, sports were practically nonexistent in Vegas, due to potential conflicts of interest with sports gambling — then the city picked up three major sports league teams (and a Stanley Cup!) over the past seven years. Countless iconic buildings and attractions on the Strip are either crumbling or gone without a trace, and a new one is either opening or under construction at any given time.
(Side note: If you’re ever in the city, I strongly recommend a guided tour of the Neon Museum.)
In summary, it’s a perfectly ingenious setting for a story about aging and obsolescence.
The plot concerns “Le Razzle Dazzle”, a dance revue that’s been running in Vegas for close to 40 years. So naturally, it’s a throwback to a time when Vegas showgirls wore rhinestones and feathers and giant headdresses… you know, the iconic Vegas showgirl. Alas, like everything else from the old days of Vegas, this kind of revue has gone out of style. Nowadays, all the dance shows are either Cirque du Soleil or hormone-driven strip shows without much of anything in between.
In other words, the casino’s new owners are stuck with a fossilized dance revue that nobody’s coming to see. This inevitably means Le Razzle Dazzle is closing, and we get to watch the two weeks before it fades away for good.
Anderson plays Shelly Gardner, a 57-year-old showgirl who’s been part of Razzle Dazzle for almost as long as the show’s been running. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s the oldest dancer who’s still in the cast. Which means that in such a notoriously unpredictable industry and in such a famously volatile town, she’s one of the rare lucky handful who got to live her dream for longer than her castmates have been alive.
Shelly got her turn as the hottest young talent. She got to entertain crowds, see the world, and make money doing it all. And now that it’s almost over, she’s got nothing to show for it. She put everything she has into a lost paradigm, and she’s got nothing left for the time to come. This whole situation is so new to her that she doesn’t know what to do, leaving her with frustrations that she takes out on everyone else. Thus we’re left with 90 minutes of a woman self-destructing and driving away everyone else.
In the supporting cast, we’ve got Jamie Lee Curtis as the “best friend” character. Annette is a jaded bitter former showgirl who left the Razzle Dazzle some time ago to be a jaded bitter cocktail waitress. It’s certainly a viable career path for Shelly, except that she’d rather be up on stage and out of the customers’ reach. Moreover, even as a cocktail waitress, we see that Annette isn’t immune from losing shifts to her younger and sexier peers.
Speaking of which, we’ve got Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka, here playing a couple of hot young Razzle Dazzle showgirls trying their luck with other auditions. Two 19-year-old dancers who are willing and able to perform the sexier and more provocative dances that Shelly brushes off as prurient trash. Or maybe Shelly is simply jealous that she can’t pull off those moves anymore. Either way, Shelly is peeved that the younger generation only sees dancing as a steady job without recognizing the passion or artistic value in it. (Certainly not in the older and “classier” style of Shelly’s generation.)
Next up is Eddie (Dave Bautista), the stalwart stage manager running the Razzle Dazzle. This guy’s a two-fer. On the one hand, he’s the guy who’s most likely to find gainful employment on the next show, precisely because he’s so good at running everything behind the scenes. The guy with the secure and stable job gets to carry on while the talent who actually puts herself onto a stage night after night gets chewed up and spit out, and Shelly finds that unfair. On another level, Eddie is the quasi-romantic interest who’s got a history with Shelly. This brings so many questions about what exactly Shelly gave up and what she could’ve had in the time she was onstage instead, and whether she might get it back when she’s not dancing anymore.
Which brings us to Hannah (Billie Lourd), Shelly’s estranged daughter. The character who confirms all of Shelly’s worst fears about herself. In terms that are fair yet brutally honest, so tearfully heartfelt that Shelly can’t ignore them, Hannah perfectly demonstrates how old and useless Shelly has become after 30 years as a showgirl instead of a mother.
It really is the cast that carries this movie. After all, if you want to know anything at all about life as an aging sex symbol, you listen to Pamela Fucking Anderson. Likewise, if you want to talk about all the ups and downs of living with a mother in showbiz, just imagine the stories that could come from Carrie Fisher’s kid. Kiernan Shipka is the hot young talent who’s between stable gigs and trying to figure out how to age artistically. Jamie Lee Curtis is the aging star who’s long past the point of giving a fuck. Dave Bautista is the guy you’d want to have your back when everything’s going to shit. Hell, even Jason Schwartzman (the director’s cousin, remember) gets a speaking cameo appearance that’s impeccably placed.
The cast is amazing and Kate Gersten (here making her feature debut) turned in a marvelous script. Too bad the direction isn’t up to snuff.
Every shot in this movie is handheld shaky-cam. Every other shot is a close-up or an extreme close-up. Most of the shots look like the edges were smeared with Vaseline. The montages are incomprehensibly edited and only serve to pad out the runtime. Strictly in terms of camerawork and editing, this movie looks atrocious.
It might be in bad taste to cry nepotism and I realize that everyone has to start somewhere, but The Last Showgirl had a cast and a script that readily deserved a better director. Even so, the actors all come out of this looking like masters and the script is thematically dense. I feel like we badly needed a movie like The Substance for anyone who didn’t like the sci-fi gimmick or couldn’t stomach the body horror, and this movie fits that niche perfectly.
Could this be the start of a career comeback for Pamela Anderson? Ask me again when she plays a role that doesn’t read like it was custom-built for her. But for right now, this is easily worth checking out. With adjusted expectations, but still.