The Last Showgirl

Last night my nephew and I went to see The Last Showgirl at the Broadway.  I was really eager to see this because of everything I had heard about Pamela Anderson's performance and it is definitely the highlight of the movie.  Shelly Gardner (Anderson) has been a dancer in a Las Vegas revue called Le Razzle Dazzle for over thirty years.  Her much younger castmates Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) see the show as just a way to earn money but she thinks of it as a glamorous career in an iconic show where she feels beautiful and seen.  However, when she learns that show will be closing permanently very soon, she must come to terms with the effect her career has had on the relationship with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) and with the fact that she has only been deluding herself that she is a star after a disappointing audition for another director (Jason Schwartzman).  I really loved the exploration of what it means to follow a dream even when that dream requires sacrifices or is derided by others and I found the ending to be almost triumphant even though Shelly's future remains uncertain.  I also liked the examination of how society treats women when they age (this would be a great double feature with The Substance), especially in the scenes involving Shelly's friend and former castmate Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis).  Anderson gives the performance of her career and, as a woman who was herself sexualized in most of her acting roles and then discarded, she brings an authenticity to the role that is incredibly poignant.  I particularly loved her vulnerability in the audition scene.  I was also really impressed by Dave Bautista as Eddie, the producer of the revue, but I found Curtis to be too over the top.  Unfortunately, the script is quite weak with ambiguous relationships that I wish had been explored more fully and much of the already short runtime is taken up with artistic shots of Shelly standing in front of various locations (I get that this is supposed to represent the real Las Vegas that tourists don't see but the repetition becomes tedious).  Much like with Maria, I really loved the central performance but didn't necessarily love the movie.