The Last Showgirl- Pamela Anderson Is Mind Blowing In This Dramatic Turn

Quick Take: I’ve had the opportunity to debate this quite a bit since seeing this film, and I prefer to reward talent when i truly believe they are near or at the top of their game. So in a year where Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Soarise Ronan, and others delivered strong performances, none of them were definitively their best. In what is like watching a baby walk for the first time, that can’t be said of Pamela Anderson who was matched perfectly to the right role in The Last Showgirl. But, simply casting Anderson was a risk. Was she actually capable of handling the emotional work of her character? Could she pull back the complexities of being an aging showgirl with no other discernible skill sets?

Yes. And for every single person who is thinking “it’s just good for Pamela Anderson, but not one of the year’s best”, let me remind you of watching another baby walk a few years back when Simon Rex was given Red Rocket. Nothing in his career suggested he was capable of that. there’s also the buzzy dramatic turn by Andrew Dice Clay in Blue Jasmine. We’ve seen these performances before, and I tend to remember them a lot longer than the 11th best performance of Kate Winslet.

Anderson is supported by a terrific Jamie Lee Curtis. I’ve loved her as an actress forever, and when she finally was nominated for Everything Everywhere All At Once, even though I didn’t think she was a top five performance, it was still a long time coming. I’d like to think that the critical acclaim for her work there has given people permission to give her a SAG and BAFTA nomination. She is terrific here, and in my opinion, actually better than her Oscar winning performance.

From the beginning moments when Pamela Anderson first walks into the audition, to when we catch up on that moment later, we see this well formed world, and an emotionally complex Anderson, who not only uses her own experience as being seen as nothing more than just her physical characteristics, and the ramifications of what happens when that clock runs out, but also as a mother trying to repair her strained relationship with her daughter. Anderson is finally getting the career she always wanted. She has lines. She has scenes. She has co-stars that can act. we could ahve had this sooner, but everyone was too focused on two really prominent aspects of her, and couldn’t see anything else. Now, in 2024, The last Showgirl is almost a perfect companion piece to The Substance. It’s another movie holding the world accountable for creating industries based on beauty, and then sending women out to pasture when they reach a certain age.

Pamela Anderson has arrived, and she deserves all the praise in the world. For more, check out the video.