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The Last Showgirl
Despite an eye-opening performance by Pamela Anderson in the title role, 2024's The Last Showgirl never really tugs heartstrings or ignites tear ducts as I think was intended, making for a slightly labored movie experience.
Anderson plays Shelley, a Las Vegas chorus girl who has been dancing in the same show for about 30 years. At the beginning of the film, we learn that the show is being closed in two weeks forever and being turned into a circus.
Screenwriter Karen Gersten makes her full length feature debut as a screenwriter, having written for television shows like The Good Place and Mozart in the Jungle, but she may have bitten off a little more than she could chew with a story centered around the business of show business that features some interesting characters but featured a lot of stuff that was really hard to swallow.
I was a little troubled by the fact that a 42-year old Las Vegas showgirl who is going to be unemployed in two weeks never consider another kind of work. Though in the final 15 minutes, she does say she might consider becoming a cocktail waitress like her BFF Annette (Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis) who got aged out of dancing in Vegas years ago.
Don't get me wrong, Anderson works very hard to make the character of Shelley viable and she is likable, even though she might be in denial about the bubble she's been in living in and doesn't realize that the business has changed a lot in the thirty years she's been dancing in the back of a Vegas chorus line.
The subplot of Shelley's reunion with her daughter, Hannah, did ring true for the most part. Hannah's hostility and apparent embarrassment about her mother is instant and jarring and my jaw dropped when it was revealed that, in the last 30 years, she has never seen her mother's show. It feels like Anderson is depending a little too much on her lack of eye makeup to carry her performance. She still looks great though and there's a bravery in this performance. Curtis too, especially a scene where she dances on top of a casino table that never would have gone on that long in a real Vegas casino. It also bothered me that Shelley is made to look ridiculous in her audition at the climax of the film...everything that choreographer said to her was absolutely correct.
Anderson is surprisingly effective in a performance that actually earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Shout-outs to Dave Baustista as the show's stage manager and Keirnan Shipka, who played Sally Draper on Mad Men a much younger girl on Shelley's chorus line. The movie is a nice idea and there are solid performances, but I don't think it accomplishes what it was intended to accomplish.
Despite an eye-opening performance by Pamela Anderson in the title role, 2024's The Last Showgirl never really tugs heartstrings or ignites tear ducts as I think was intended, making for a slightly labored movie experience.
Anderson plays Shelley, a Las Vegas chorus girl who has been dancing in the same show for about 30 years. At the beginning of the film, we learn that the show is being closed in two weeks forever and being turned into a circus.
Screenwriter Karen Gersten makes her full length feature debut as a screenwriter, having written for television shows like The Good Place and Mozart in the Jungle, but she may have bitten off a little more than she could chew with a story centered around the business of show business that features some interesting characters but featured a lot of stuff that was really hard to swallow.
I was a little troubled by the fact that a 42-year old Las Vegas showgirl who is going to be unemployed in two weeks never consider another kind of work. Though in the final 15 minutes, she does say she might consider becoming a cocktail waitress like her BFF Annette (Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis) who got aged out of dancing in Vegas years ago.
Don't get me wrong, Anderson works very hard to make the character of Shelley viable and she is likable, even though she might be in denial about the bubble she's been in living in and doesn't realize that the business has changed a lot in the thirty years she's been dancing in the back of a Vegas chorus line.
The subplot of Shelley's reunion with her daughter, Hannah, did ring true for the most part. Hannah's hostility and apparent embarrassment about her mother is instant and jarring and my jaw dropped when it was revealed that, in the last 30 years, she has never seen her mother's show. It feels like Anderson is depending a little too much on her lack of eye makeup to carry her performance. She still looks great though and there's a bravery in this performance. Curtis too, especially a scene where she dances on top of a casino table that never would have gone on that long in a real Vegas casino. It also bothered me that Shelley is made to look ridiculous in her audition at the climax of the film...everything that choreographer said to her was absolutely correct.
Anderson is surprisingly effective in a performance that actually earned her a Golden Globe nomination. Shout-outs to Dave Baustista as the show's stage manager and Keirnan Shipka, who played Sally Draper on Mad Men a much younger girl on Shelley's chorus line. The movie is a nice idea and there are solid performances, but I don't think it accomplishes what it was intended to accomplish.