The Last Showgirl
Hey everyone and welcome. Today we will be talking about the film The Last Showgirl. Fun fact, Director Gia Coppola referenced a shot from Michael Bays Transformer 2 which uses an old light trick where you spin lights outside of the camera. This film came out in 2024 and stars Pamela Anderson, Brenda Song, and Kiernan Shipka and was directed by Gia Coppola. So without further ado let’s get right into it.
The Last Showgirl follows Shelly, a seasoned showgirl, who must figure out what her future has in store for her after the show she’s been dancing in for 30 years abruptly closes.
The Last Showgirl is a Drama. It has similar vibes to Showgirls, Burlesque, or The First Wives Club.
The Last Showgirl caught my eye because I kept seeing people talk about Pamela Anderson’s performance, and it made me realize I had never seen her act in anything, so I wanted to check it out. Going into the film, I didn’t watch any trailers, so I truly went in blind, so much so that the cast even surprised me because I had no clue all those people were in it. The plot deals with aging, and it was interesting to see it through the eyes of this showgirl.
Pamela Anderson plays Shelly, a showgirl who is in shock that her dream career is being cut short and doesn't know what to do next. When watching it reminded me of how hard aging is for women and how society judges them harshly for something so natural. In media, I've seen throughout history either the lack of roles women get as they age or often playing a mom or grandparent, which oftentimes is not the same for their male counterparts. This film seems to highlight this because the performers for the new shows need to be young and sexy, which is not what Shelly wants and they aren’t looking for older women, so they get overlooked. Shelly loves being a showgirl and really believes the show is a descendant of similar shows in Paris. She has given up so much to do what she does, and there is a disconnect with the younger girls because they seem to do it just because they need a job while she does it purely out of love. She has a daughter whom she has a strained relationship with because she was an only parent and left her daughter in the car often while she did shows. We come to find out that her daughter's dad is Eddie, who is the producer of the show, and he doesn't want to be involved, and both of them judge her harshly which sucks because everyone has their flaws. Besides showing how hard aging is for women, Shelly also lets us see how it's hard to chase your dream when you're not 100 percent in control of your own fate and how you might have standards you don't want to stoop below, but you have to in order to survive. I love that at the end, we finally get to see her be a star, and we see how happy she is on stage in her last performance.
Through Shelly’s experiences and Annette’s, we see how society discards things that are deemed old. It was sad to see because they both enjoyed being showgirls, and it seemed to be the thing that brought them the most joy, and it was ripped away from both of them. Shelly is still in the show, but Annette is not, and she's struggling to keep a place to live and also trying to keep her job even though they try to replace her with younger girls. The movie offers an interesting view on aging because we see different women in the movie at different ages trying to figure out what to do next and how hard it can be as these new jobs want young and sexy, and the women who are older are thrown to the side because society doesn't appreciate how iconic the showgirl was in Vegas and these women have no choice but to try and keep up or they will be jobless and homeless. It's interesting to see how the older you get, the harder it becomes if you need to find a job and how you might have to do something you don't want in order to survive because someone else is in control of your fate.
The cast of this film was amazing. Pamela gave a stellar performance, and we just see how she’s holding onto this dream til the very end and knows the importance of the show, but unfortunately, that doesn't bring in money. Jamie Lee Curtis is this older former showgirl who is working to survive but misses the days of her being in the show. She was funny at points, but to me, it seemed like she was that way to hide how much sadness she felt with not being able to be a showgirl, as well as her struggling to make ends meet. Brenda Song is another showgirl who seems to be in the middle she understands where Shelly is coming from but also understands where Jodie is coming from and knows she has to survive once the show is over and move on. Jodie, who is played by Kiernan Shipka, is young, and from her showing up at Shelly’s house late, I gathered that she ran away from home to do this job, but with the show closing and her not having a job, she is scared and sees Shelly as a mom, and goes to Shelly for help and Shelly can't deal with it at the time. Her character gave a bit of foreshadowing when she said Shelly was like the mom and Eddie was like the dad because we later find out they have a kid together. Dave Bautista plays Eddie, who cares about the girls but also does not have much say in the future of the show and tries to help out wherever he can, except for taking care of his daughter. Billie Lourd plays Shelly's daughter, who at first I thought was a former co-worker until we learn more and see how Shelly kinda gave her up but tries to keep in contact with her. Shelly believes she did what was right, but Billie's character doesn't agree with it and doesn't think the show was worth ruining her childhood. It's interesting to see all these characters interact with each other, especially Shelly, who is the main connecting piece trying to keep everyone in good spirits while she tries to avoid the inevitable, which is the show closing.
The movie is filmed on film, which is interesting since a lot of films are filmed on digital now. It reminds me of one of the themes of the movie about how when things get old, we discard them, and I think filming this way shows that just because things get older doesn’t mean they should be discarded and shows they are still useful and can have a great outcome with it. I loved how the film looked a bit grainy, which helped portray the timeline and make it look like a throwback like you were watching a movie filmed in the early 2000s even though it’s today. There are many choices filmmakers make when filming, and what camera to use is one and it helps them with how they want the movie to look and what they want the viewer to feel.
I must also add the Miley Cyrus and Andrew Wyatt song Beautiful That Way was a great addition to the movie. The lyrics mirror the movie and how Shelly put on a brave face and tried to keep going instead of giving up. It also seems to address times changing and how you should remember the golden days but also that those days are over. Miley's voice sounds beautiful, and the song feels like it could be in a showgirl performance.
My favorite part about the film is how it starts off with an event, and then the story goes back a bit in time, and then towards the end of the film, we revisit the event we started with more information as to how we got there and see how it doesn't go as Shelly planned. I loved being able to see what got us to that moment, why she was auditioning, and how hard it was for her to even go to the audition because she felt the showgirl had importance and, in that audition, felt that she was being pushed aside because she wasn’t sexy enough. She has a breakdown after the performance, and we see all the stuff she's been holding inside, her sadness for the show ending, the stress of everyone viewing her as the mom of the group, and unsure how she's going to survive because these shows aren't looking for older women. It was sad because it shows how age is something that happens naturally, but for Shelly and others, we see it as something that some people see as a difference when hiring someone to do a job even though they have the experience.
The Last Showgirl is a great film with a lovely cast. I feel like too often films like this are too long but the run time was perfect to show the story that Gia wanted to show. The performances surprised me and the story really had me thinking about something that has become so normal in our society and seeing how it affects individuals.
