TORONTO, Canada—Just as The Wrestler gave Mickey Rourke one last shot at big-screen stardom (and Oscar gold) via the role of an aging entertainer struggling to make a comeback, so too does The Last Showgirl bestow Pamela Anderson with an opportunity to demonstrate her bona fide acting chops by playing an over-the-hill Las Vegas dancer facing impending irrelevance.

In both cases, the films hinge on the echoes between the protagonists’ and headliners’ pasts and presents, but the difference is that Rourke was once a great actor and Anderson was, well, not, and that unfortunately continues to be the case with Gia Coppola’s indie. Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, the writer/director’s third feature is a shallow and slender tale of lousy dreams, worse decisions, and painful regrets, all of it predicated on a lead turn that’s too one-note to wow.

Shelley (Anderson) is 57 years old and still participating in “Le Razzle Dazzle,” a revue at an unnamed Vegas casino that requires her to wear a classic showgirl costume decorated with kitschy rhinestones and feathers. Five seconds spent in her bustling dressing room is enough to convey that she’s decades older than her fellow dancers, two of whom, Marianne (Brenda Song) and Jody (Kiernan Shipka), are her friends.

So too is Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a brash cocktail waitress whose cleavage is always on prominent display and whose face and hair are done up in the gaudiest way imaginable. Together, they’re a ragtag family, and Kate Gersten’s obvious script........

© The Daily Beast