"Magic" Mike Lane can't stop bumping and grinding. He's the male stripper version of a bank robber or cowboy who swears he's retired but gets lured back into action for one last job. "Magic Mike's Last Dance," the third film starring Channing Tatum as a big-hearted, iron-thewed Florida stripper, knows that we know that Mike doesn't feel truly fulfilled unless he's dancing. To its credit, Steven Soderbergh's new movie gets the "I'm done, don't ask me to dance" ritual out of the way in less than ten minutes. A brief prologue establishes that Mike lost his furniture business during the pandemic and works as a bartender at catered events in Miami. That's where he meets Max (Salma Hayek Pinault), the estranged and wants-to-be-divorced wife of a London one-percenter. Max offers Mike an exorbitant sum for one last dance. After a brief pantomime of refusal, he agrees, and it's such a mind-blowing experience for Max (the sex afterward is great, too) that she invites him to come with her to London and create and choreograph a stage production that will bring the Magic Mike experience to the West End. You know, the kind of thing that happens all the time. The rest of the movie is a backstage drama about Mike and Max learning how to be a couple as they collaborate on the show and try to stop it from getting shut down by Max's husband for violating historic district architectural codes, etc. It's all just a series of perfunctory roadblocks placed between Max and Mike's inevitable and well-deserved happy endings as lovers and artistic collaborators. Most of all, "Magic Mike's Last Dance" is about fit, graceful bodies moving through space. Whether the performers are dance-miming sex that would get the film an NC-17 rating if the actors weren't clothed or performing a sort-of Bob Fosse-meets-"Singin' in the Rain" routine onstage, or just walking and talking around London while coping with anxieties that will smother happiness if not held in check. While the movie did have some on-point choreography featuring neat and decent dance moves from the dancers in their dance sequences, those weren't enough to save this film. "Magic Mike's Last Dance" falls short on so many levels, and it garners two out of five stars. The direction by Steven Soderbergh is unremarkable, overly pedantic, and it lacks the authenticity of the first two sequels, and it comes across more cynical. Hayek Pinault and Tatum lack adequate chemistry to make this film work yet on a lighter note, the cinematography and art design are both striking and noteworthy.
Review of Magic Mike's Last Dance
