The Last Showgirl review – Pamela Anderson dazzles as Vegas dancer hitting midlife
Anderson’s depiction of an older performer’s struggles, as youth slips away and family fractures, rivals Demi Moore’s in The Substance
Warm and generous performances carry this good-natured movie from director Gia Coppola; it’s actually the sort of approachable, actor-led drama for grownups that pundits complain Hollywood doesn’t produce any more. Pamela Anderson stars as Shelly, a middle-aged Las Vegas showgirl and 30-year veteran of a cheesy spectacle called Le Razzle Dazzle, gamely putting on the feathers and the sparkly rhinestones and revealing costumes alongside dancers in their teens – all for dwindling audiences who are looking for novelties and more overtly sexualised shows elsewhere.
Shelly is stunned to learn that the show is getting canned and must now figure out what to do with her life and how to repair relations with her grownup daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who always felt she came second in her mother’s life to the pseudo-glamour of her nudie showbiz vocation. It is a film about families, adoptive families and ersatz families; the director is famously the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and a cousin to producer Matthew Shire, who is married to the film’s screenwriter Karen Gersten, but this is a film with more than nepo status.
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