Brenda Song Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

A Las Vegas showgirl has to deal with the imminent closure of her show in The Last Showgirl. Shelly Gardner (Pamela Anderson) is a 57-year-old Las Vegas showgirl, who has performed in the revue Le Razzle Dazzle for the past three decades and acts as a mother figure for the younger dancers Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Marry-Anne (Brenda Song). Shelly is also best friends with Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), who left the show some time ago and is now a cocktail waitress. Eddie (Dave Bautista), the producer of Le Razzle Dazzle, tells Shelly the bad news that the show will be shut down in two weeks. This leaves Shelly distraught, as performing in the show has been her main passion. As a result, Shelly attempts to patch things up with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), whom she neglected as a child while performing. The Last Showgirl Synopsis The Last Showgirl is the third feature film from director Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, which stars Pamela Anderson as past-her-prime Las Vegas Showgirl, Shelly, still holding onto the glory days of her youth. While Le Razzle Dazzle is criticized as a "stupid nudie show," Shelly insists that there is a Parisian class to the show, which differentiates it from the more sexually explicit shows that now dominate the Las Vegas strip. However, Shelly's dedication to performing in Le Razzle Dazzle cost her a relationship with her daughter Hannah, played by Billy Lourd (Booksmart, Star Wars: The Force Awakens). When Shelly finds out from producer Eddie, played by Dave Bautista (Glass Onion) in a quite solid dramatic performance, that Le Razzle Dazzle is about to be shut down, Shelly is left not knowing what to do. My Thoughts on The Last Showgirl I ended up finding many parallels between The Last Showgirl and 2008's The Wrestler, in how both involve a performer facing the end of their career and trying to reconnect with their estranged daughter. However, unlike Darren Aronofsky's film, The Last Showgirl ends up being less tragic and even has a sense of optimism by the end. One thing that the film does benefit from is the perfect casting of Pamela Anderson in the lead role. For the majority of her career, Pamela Anderson has been seen as a sex symbol, either by posing in the pages of Playboy or starring in TV shows such as Baywatch. Anderson was never truly taken seriously as an actor and spent much of the past two decades appearing in bit parts and cameos. However, now in her late 50s, Pamela Anderson has not only embraced her age by forgoing make-up in her public appearances but now has a chance to prove herself as a serious actor, while also reflecting on her career as a sex symbol. Apart from Pamela Anderson, the second-best performance in The Last Showgirl belongs to Jamie Lee Curtis as Annette, the best friend of Anderson's Shelley. While Curtis has minimal screen time in the film, she does make the most of it, such as shamelessly wearing a thong in a dressing room and dancing on a table to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Then there's former pro-wrestler Dave Bautista, who continues his successful journey of being taken seriously as an actor, giving arguably his best dramatic performance as Eddie. The Last Showgirl benefits from having a female director in Gia Coppola, as none of the central cast members come off as overtly sexualized, despite the nature of the show they perform in. That said, former child actor Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) does open some eyes in one scene where demonstrates her stripper choreography from a recent audition. Also, in probably The Last Showgirl's most difficult-to-watch scene, Gia Coppla's cousin Jason Schwartzman makes a cameo as a casting director, who makes some incredibly ageist and sexist comments to Shelley. Reportedly, Pamela Anderson was quite upset when her mid-1990s sex tape scandal was exploited without her permission for the 2022 Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy. As such, The Last Showgirl is an opportunity for Pamela Anderson to reclaim her narrative and prove that she is more than the sex symbol she was seen as three decades ago. Here's hoping this film opens the door for more dramatic roles in this late-career renaissance for Pamela Anderson.