The Last Showgirl

The best film by a Coppola since On the Rocks (2020), Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl nevertheless takes Best Picture level material and dilutes it to something vastly below its potential.

Kneecapping the feature is its most intriguing aspect: Pamela Anderson’s lead performance as aging Las Vegas stage star Shelly, whose career is about to meet its end as her once popular show, Le Razzle Dazzle, is slated for cancelation.

Though still beautiful in her late 50s after admirably eschewing makeup for this role and in real life, Anderson has never been a great actor and remains too flighty a performer to carry a film. As Shelly, she's stuck in frightened hummingbird mode regardless of the circumstances, muting the impact of a powerful predicament.

A similar sense of one-note earnestness runs throughout The Last Showgirl. Coppola and screenwriter Kate Gersten aren't going for The Substance-like creativity to convey their message of show business’ toxic obsession with youth, and instead opt for a matter-of-fact approach that yields difficult blunt truths about the Vegas profession.

In turn, the film’s best scenes showcase honest vulnerability, backstage nerves, and dressing room sisterhood with Shelly's fellow performers, including relative newbies played by Kieran Shipka and Brenda Song, both of whom view Shelly as a mother figure.

Rounding out the supporting cast, Dave Bautista is excellent as the show’s big-hearted director Eddie, and Jamie Lee Curtis steals each of her scenes as Annette, a comically over-tanned showgirl turned cocktail waitress (and cautionary tale for Shelly of her options once the show closes).

Less successful, however, is a lazily constructed subplot with Shelly’s estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), drama clearly meant to be nearly as stressful as her career woes that never quite plays out with that level of urgency.

These scattered strengths ultimately make The Last Showgirl worth watching, yet its frustrating proximity to greatness is difficult to deny.

Grade: B-minus. Rated R. Now playing at Carolina Cinemark and Regal Biltmore Grande

(Photo: Roadside Attractions)