Directed by Gia Coppola

A step forward from Gia Coppola‘s previous films, The Last Showgirl perfectly casts Pamela Anderson as an aging Las Vegas performer, still spellbound by the traditional shows of yore, navigating the changing landscape of dance and spectacle on the Strip. Her show, Le Razzle Dazzle, was once the pearl of the city — adorned with extravagant costumes and taken on international tours. Today, it’s faded glory sells just a few tickets per show and operates under constant threat of cancellation.

Anderson’s Shelly performs in Le Razzle Dazzle with two friends-slash-surrogate-daughters, played by Brenda Song & Kiernan Shipka, and the show is managed by Shelly’s former lover and father of her only child, Dave Bautista. Her daughter, a college student laboriously played by Billie Lourd, enters and exits scenes seemingly at random.

Shelly’s best friend of decades, the incomparable Jaime Lee Curtis, is a cocktail waitress, or “bevertainer”, struggling financially and emotionally, trying to understand her place in Las Vegas after leaving Le Razzle Dazzle years prior.

Production

The costumes shown in the film are the original Bob Mackie outfits from the famed Vegas show Jubilee and haven’t left the building in 30 years. This movie is worth watching if for no other reason than to enjoy the beautiful intricacy of the clothes!

Once the full cast was on board they did very little rehearsing, meeting with the Jubilee performers once or twice and cooking dinner together in Anderson’s home before beginning filming. They shot on film with one clamshell monitor in just 18 days.

This film follows a lot of the same production structures as Coppola’s previous work: Long, wannabe-poignant close-ups of characters in their most trying moments, scenes of troubled women dancing alone in their homes. The camera work, purposefully shaky and unfocused, can be distracting. At times it looks and feels like a student film.

The plot

This script started as a play, and didn’t really progress out of play-land and into movie-dom. Luckily, that doesn’t act as much of a barrier. There are some scenes that feel daftly overwritten (ie: Jason Schwartzman‘s essential summary of the entire plot in one sentence “You were hired because you were young and beautiful, now you’re not,”) but they’re usually rebounded quickly by good reaction performances. Anderson’s parking lot freakout after Schwartzman’s rejection is a masterclass.

Final thoughts

There are some moments of almost devastating cringe sprinkled in (namely every single solo dance scene) but they’re all “look-past-able” for the greater good of the story. It’s clear Coppola is interested in the slice of life, and this is a significantly better execution than her other attempts.

Bautista, Anderson, and Curtis are major highlights — more proof that Bautista is far worthier than the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that Curtis can do (almost) no wrong. This is a simple story about a woman’s struggle to find her purpose as her life changes, and it’s competent enough to leave its mark.

This movie is good.

My rating: 3/5