I think one of the nice things about watching actors, some iconic for one reason or another, get older is that they sometimes get to show what they can do in a role that seems to be tailor-made for them. Nick Cage’s whole career resurgence in recent years, where he went from punchline to, well, maybe a self-aware punchline comes to mind. Or maybe the way Ke Huy Quan basically came back from nowhere and won an Oscar. These are roles that seem to fit just this one particular actor, and that may be due to that actor’s professional image or lived experience or both, but when they do this one role, it just kinda makes sense.
Anyway, Pamela Anderson may have gotten that role as a one-time sex symbol still living off her past glory in a sense in The Last Showgirl.
Anderson stars as Shelly, a seasoned Vegas showgirl who has dedicated the last thirty years of her life to a single show, something called Razzle Dazzle. She may not be rich, but she is something of a mother figure to co-star Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and to a lesser extent more cynical dancer Mary-Anne (Brenda Song). Her best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a former member of the show and currently working as a cocktail waitress, and she seems to have at least a good professional relationship with her awkward producer Eddie (Dave Bautista). Things come to a head when word comes down that, after decades of performances, the casino owners are shutting Razzle Dazzle down, and this isn’t the sort of job that comes with a pension or anything along those lines.
What, then, is Shelly to do? She tries to work on a relationship with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), but beyond that, what is there? She doesn’t really approve of the newer, more lewd shows that are happening across Vegas, but does she really have the sorts of skills she’d need to even get another job like hers at her age? Sure, Jodie is a natural dancer, and Mary-Anne can probably land on her feet, but then there’s Annette, a woman with a gambling problem that still has to use her body to try and get tips and the like. Shelly is going to have to come to terms with the decisions she’s made over the course of the last thirty years, and she may have to wonder why she devoted so much time to a single Vegas show that may not have even required that much talent from her to even perform night after night.
I suppose the question this movie asks is whether or not what decisions Shelly made are worth it to her. She’s aware that many of the decisions she’s made are contradictory in nature, and the closing of the show is making her face up to them and the relationships she’s had along the way. Sure, her face is still on the brochure for the show, but it’s not exactly a new photo there. Director Gia Coppola (yes, Francis Ford’s granddaughter, and she got her cousin Jason Schwartzman for a small role) doesn’t try to hide the fact that both Anderson and Curtis are not young women, but they still have to try to have something like sex appeal in their jobs even well into middle or old age. I wouldn’t call either Anderson or Curtis hideous or anything, but the movie doesn’t hide their wrinkles. That’s appropriate as Anderson’s Shelly wrestles with her feelings over spending thirty years as a showgirl, a profession she romanticizes a bit too much while somehow wanting to do something like art in her life.
As for Anderson’s performance, it’s good, but the script seems a little underwritten. Curtis and Bautista both manage to get a lot more out of their roles with less screentime, but I think Anderson isn’t quite on their level. Still, a role like this very much works in her wheelhouse, and she does very well with what she is given. Her desire to still be something of a good mom to Hannah or maybe a good role model/mother-figure to Jodie and Mary-Anne suggest someone who maybe had a lot to offer, but in the end, she’s asking if she offered it to the right place. The answer there isn’t given, but when Shelly talks about the actual appeal of doing Razzle Dazzle, it makes a lot of sense, and I don’t think anyone but Anderson could have played the role with the same sort of lived experience. That helps a movie like this one.
Grade: B-
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