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The former Baywatch star’s turn as a veteran Vegas dancer single-handedly rewrites her career in Gia Coppola’s bruising and beautiful film

A life spent in the service of dreams and fantasy collides with unforgiving reality: Pamela Anderson’s veteran Vegas showgirl Shelly is forced to face a future that no longer has need of her 1,000-watt smile and glitter-smeared decolletage. The third feature from Palo Alto-director Gia Coppola, The Last Showgirl is a wisp of a thing, clocking in at under 90 minutes and shot in just 18 days. The film’s structure, more a series of vignettes than a linear narrative, feels like the fleeting reflections of a life captured in the facets of a mirror ball. It’s initially tempting to dismiss the picture, like its central character with her breathy, little-girl voice, as superficial. But there’s a bruising cumulative power to this melancholy little paean to an ending era.

Few celebrities have been as denigrated throughout their career as Pamela Anderson — and so a sober, wistful character study would seem the perfect vehicle for her to prove her acting chops. The former Baywatch star gives a quite literally glittering comeback performance in Gia Coppola’s latest, The Last Showgirl, a dreamy, understated ode to the underdogs of Las Vegas. After Mainstream and Palo Alto, Coppola jettisons her usual wryly humorous tone in favour of a more pensive mood. But the drama falls slightly short of being the heavy hitter it hopes to be.

Bedecked in feathers and rhinestones, Anderson embodies a livewire energy as Shelly, a Las Vegas Strip dancer who we first see lying about her age in an audition. Cut to roughly a week before, and Shelly is informed by her sweet-natured producer Eddie (Dave Bautista) that Le Razzle Dazzle, the show Shelly has been the face of for 38 years,...

The following contains spoilers for The Last Showgirl, now playing in theatersThe Last Showgirl's focus on a dancer inching closer to the end of her career is one of the most bittersweet and earnest films Pamela Anderson has ever appeared in. Directed by Gia Copola, The Last Showgirl is focused on Pamela Anderson's Shelly, a dancer who has spent decades as the face of "Le Razzle Dazzle," a dance revue on the Las Vegas strip. At the expense of a more stable life with her daughter Hannah, Shelly has been following her passion for decades. However, the announcement that the show is closing sets off a story of somber reflection.

The Last Showgirl's characters are all figures from Shelly's orbit, ranging from her best friend and fellow dancers to the daughter that she's become distant with. The film keeps the focus on Shelly throughout, highlighting the emotional toll that her passions have cost her.

Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a dreamy, melancholy portrait of a veteran Las Vegas dancer reeling from the news that her career has hit its expiration date. The movie is as gossamer-thin as the wings that the title character, Shelly — played by Pamela Anderson with an undiluted sense of heartbreak — keeps tearing on her stage costume. The story more often drifts than advances, favoring ambience over substance in a few too many wordless sequences observing Shelly wandering or dancing or just staring into the abyss in sun-blasted parking lots, on rooftops and streets, bathed in lens flare and the shimmering score of Andrew Wyatt.

After her promising 2013 feature debut Palo Alto and her sophomore stumble seven years later with Mainstream, Coppola seems more in thrall than ever to the impressionistic style of Aunt Sofia. But the new film — written by Kate Gersten, a Coppola clan member by marriage...

“I’m older––I’m not old,” says Shelley, the longest-term performer in a past-its-prime Las Vegas revue. She is played by Pamela Anderson, the international icon who has never, ever had a role like this. Shelley is 57 years old, living paycheck-to-paycheck, estranged from her daughter, and intensely vulnerable. Clearly we are far from the beaches of Baywatch and action spectacle that was Barb Wire. And Anderson is one of the chief reasons Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a noteworthy film. But this is not stunt casting. It’s a real-deal performance, and Shelley is one of the more memorable Vegas denizens in recent cinema.

Shelley’s Las Vegas is the Vegas of shattered dreams and empty pockets––stripped of artifice and bathed in harsh sunlight. Coppola, whose earlier efforts Palo Alto and Mainstream showed great promise, and screenwriter Kate Gersten have a keen understanding of the behind-the-scenes world of the city.

After burning through countless stories involving his family and personal (mis)adventures with his Netflix specials Secret Time and Hey Big Boy, comedian Bert Kreischer squeezed “the last bit of juice out of the orange” with his latest, the Golden Globes contender Razzle Dazzle.

The Florida native feels, looking back, that this special is most certainly “the best” he’s put out so far. “I feel like it is all where I’ve grown, and I think it is all the shit you love me for,” he tells Deadline. “There’s a lot of great family stuff. There’s wild, funny stories. There’s a f*ckng ass hair cutting, and I know it’s performed better than any of my other specials, which is insane when you think Hey Big Boy was released three days after stay-at-home orders for [Covid]. Me and Tiger King were the first week.”

Remarkably, Razzle...

At its core, the first season of "Schmigadoon!" on Apple TV+ is about two people that are trying to navigate the complex topics of love and relationships. But on the surface, as these characters are trapped in a town that won't let the leave until they find true love, the series starring Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key is a love letter to the Golden Age of musicals, which featured stories that often were light, bright, and shiny. However, for the show's second season, this couple is moving from the romance of the 1940s and 1950s to the darker and grittier aura of musical theater from the 1960s and 1970s.

During the Television Critics Association's winter press tour, /Film's Vanessa Armstrong was able to attend the panel featuring Key, his co-star Dove Cameron, and co-creator/songwriter/showrunner Cinco Paul where they discussed how their show would make that transition into...