THE LAST SHOWGIRL
Running time: 85 minutes. Not yet rated.
TORONTO — “I think I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this film,” Pamela Anderson told a rapt crowd after her new movie Friday night.
The “Baywatch” star has definitely put in the hours for the part.
In “The Last Showgirl,” which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Anderson stars as a 57-year-old Las Vegas revue dancer who’s about to be out of a job.
Her old-fashioned show, clunkily if aptly called “Le Razzle Dazzle,” is closing after 38 years on the Strip.
“A dinosaur,” another showgirl calls it.
And Pam’s Shelley has been donning the same pink feathers and doing the same tastefully nude choreo since 1987. She knows nothing else.
Anderson has plenty of life experience to draw from to play poor Shelley. The projects that made her famous — “Baywatch,” Playboy, “Home Improvement” — are themselves of a bygone era of slow-motion beach runs, laugh tracks and, um, paper.
And, as she taps into that deep well of emotion, the actress is heartbreaking in the lovely indie directed by Gia Coppola and co-starring Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd and Dave Bautista.
It’s another smart move in Pam’s red-hot second act.
Back in 2022, I was pleasantly shocked when it was announced that Anderson would make her Broadway debut as foxy Roxie Hart in the musical “Chicago.”
The cast change came out of nowhere. And nobody knew if she could sing or dance. But, like “The Last Showgirl,” the pairing just made sense.
Murderess Roxie becomes a tabloid sensation who, while in jail, sees more flashbulbs than sunrises.
Pamela hasn’t killed anybody, I assume, but she knows more than anyone who’s ever taken on that role what it’s like to be ruthlessly hounded by the press. On her first night on 49th Street, I was blown away — as was the roaring audience.
“There is something to be said about the electricity that comes from pure affection for an actress — especially if she is able to generously return it,” I wrote. “And, boy, does she ever.”
Now Anderson’s gone from Broadway to the Toronto Film Festival, where “Barb Wire” and “Raw Justice” certainly would not have made the cut back in the 1990s.
With the much classier “Last Showgirl,” Coppola and screenwriter Kate Gersten explore the Vegas that “Oceans 11” and “The Hangover” dare not wander — the hotel workers, their modest and marble-free homes, their dreams and desires.
Curtis is especially hilarious as a brassy, spray-tanned former showgirl named Annette who’s now a casino cocktail waitress that nicknames old gambling addicted women “Zsa Zsa.” But when she gets fired, implicitly for being too old, Annette hops up on a table and does a slow dance to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” It starts funny and turns beautifully fragile.
Anderson is just as breakable during scenes with Billie Lourd as her estranged daughter Hannah. Shelley gave the girl to another family when she couldn’t support her and now as Hannah is about to attend college, she judges her mom for her choices.
And Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song play Shelley’s bright-eyed young cast mates, who learn from her mistakes while they make their own.
As perfect a match as it is, there is one key difference between Anderson and her rich and relatable character.
Shelley has no idea what to do next. She tries auditioning for a trashier new show, which goes disastrously. And she considers rekindling an old flame. More than anything, she longs for a relationship with her daughter.
Anderson, however, is in total control of this unexpected new phase in her career.
Her recent choices onstage and onscreen have been bold and exciting, but, as has always been true of Pam, filled with le razzle dazzle.
