Remember when people said Pamela Anderson couldn't act? The former Baywatch star and Playboy icon is proving all of her '90s haters wrong with her new movie, The Last Showgirl. The film had a limited release in late 2024 but hits theaters in general release on Friday, January 10. And, now that mainstream reviews have started pouring in (including big outlets like The New York Times), it appears that Anderson's big arty movie about an aging Las Vegas showgirl, is, actually, pretty damn good.
Currently, The Last Showgirl holds an 82 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which means the vast majority of the 101 reviews of the film are overwhelmingly positive. In a Seattle Times review, Moira Macdonald wrote: "Anderson, who may well have been waiting her entire career for a role this rich..." while on Mashable, Siddhant Adlakha commented that the film "Practically embodies the sensation of looking back at one's life and wondering where all that time went. It's a story steeped in regret, but one that reckons with past mistakes as a common, perhaps even necessary experience."
Written by Kate Gersten, and loosely inspired by the closing of the longtime Las Vegas-strip-based live show Jubilee! which ran from 1981 to 2016. Directed by Gia Coppola, the movie tells the story of a Las Vegas showgirl named Shelly, who finds herself facing an entirely new life when her show, the Razzle Dazzle, closes forever.
The movie co-stars Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Billie Lourd, and Jason Schwartzman. Clearly, in this role, Anderson is channeling a bit of her own experiences as a sex symbol and having a very public life. In an interview with ET, she said, that the film let her reclaim her own identity. "I wanted to remember who I was," she said of making the film. "I've been playing characters my whole life in my personal life. I want to play characters in movies. Not my personal life. I want to be me. So this is an experiment."
With solid reviews and a gripping new movie with a fantastic cast, Pamela Anderson is totally taking her much-earned victory lap. And this time, none of her haters are anywhere to be found.
