Nothing lasts forever, but in Las Vegas not much sticks around longer than a minute or two. Not your money, not the old casino hotels on the Strip, and not the topless revues that, for decades, defined Sin City in a rhinestone nutshell.

In “The Last Showgirl,” Pamela Anderson plays Shelly, the longest-running cast member in the longest-running retro spectacle in town. In her baubles, bangles and bright, shiny beads this workhorse has made a living in the (fictional) show, “Le Razzle Dazzle,” for 38 years.

The promotional photos, Shelly notes, “are from the early ’80s.” The show’s audiences have grown tiny, and restive. And now the revue has entered its final two weeks. Shelly is 57, with a grown daughter she barely knows.

In the movie’s modestly scaled 80 minutes, not including the end credits, we come to know the neatly arranged supporting players in Shelly’s uncertain life. There are members of a newer generation of showgirl, played by Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song. Jamie Lee Curtis, bronzed and blowsy, goes to town as Annette, Shelly’s best friend and former comrade-in-feathers, now a cocktail waitress with a gambling problem. Dave Bautista portrays stage manager Eddie, a “Razzle Dazzle” lifer like Shelley. The two share a romantic history.

As daughter Hannah, Billie Lourd enters the story as a wary stranger, resentful of Shelly’s frazzled, distracted parenting once upon a time, though increasingly forgiving as the story’s short, bittersweet line extends. The movie’s an adaptation: Screenwriter Kate Gersten based “The Last Showgirl” on her own unproduced play “Body of Work” and director Gia Coppola took it from there, filming scenes at the 1957-era Tropicana Hotel just before its 2024 demolition.

The results in this, Coppola’s third feature, are roughly half-good, half-less. The good comes when the director, working with cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, focuses on evocative silent footage serving as interludes and visual grace notes capturing Shelly, primarily, in moments of reflection. The dialogue and the dramaturgy, in contrast, strain for jokes and over-ladle the pathos. Too many of Shelly’s childlike asides and observations sound like they’re coming from other movies, rather than a freshly observed character’s head, or heart.

Anderson has gotten a tremendous response for her work here. It’s gratifying to see a perpetually objectified and underestimated performer get ahold of a leading role requiring more of her. But more isn’t always more.

There’s a strain to much of her scene work in “The Last Showgirl,” a tendency to rush and overplay that recedes only in her scenes with Bautista. I think it’s because Bautista is like Anderson in one way but not another. He’s a performer whose career was made initially on his body and what he could do with it. But he has found his naturalistic groove. He’s an unusually effective and unaffected minimalist. You can feel Anderson relaxing in their scenes, even in moments when Shelly’s distraught, and easing into an emotion or a state of mind.

Is she really Oscar-nomination worthy at this point, in this film? No. But Hollywood loves nice, simple comeback vehicles whether the star was really away or not. And words mean little when Coppola and Arkapaw explore every dressing room corner, or sun-baked exterior shot, blurring the margins of the widescreen frame so that we concentrate on the gold: the glorious, unadorned faces we’ve known for decades.

Just not like this.

____

“The Last Showgirl” — 2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language and nudity)

Running time: 1:29

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Jan. 10

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.