I like Magic Mike. I also quite like Magic Mike XXL, although it's a lesser film. Magic Mike's Last Dance is an example of seriously diminishing returns. While I can understand some people returning to the series (Channing Tatum, writer Reid Carolin), it's strange that director Steven Soderbergh agreed to helm what is essentially a feature-length promo for the live stage show of the brand.
A lazy voiceover introduces us to where Mike (Tatum) is right now. He has lost his business, he's working as a bartender at various functions, and he's generally just trying to get by, in the same way as so many other people who took a financial hit during the global pandemic. Mike meets Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault) while bartending at an event she is hosting, eventually gives her a sexy dance after saying that he no longer sexy dances, and ends up being employed by her to head to London and put on a show that will hopefully enable other women to feel what she felt while being gyrated upon and straddled by a hunky man.
Equal parts ridiculous and tedious, Magic Mike's Last Dance is also extremely lazy. I wouldn't mind it being so predictable if I cared about the main characters, but I didn't. Mike is defined by the fact that he keeps saying he no longer sexy dances . . . and then does a sexy dance (seriously, this is used to essentially bookend the main narrative arc of the film). Maxandra AKA Max is defined by wanting to get revenge on the husband she is due to divorce, as well as the glow she is meant to have gained from one night with Mike. Jemelia George has to roll her eyes as the teen daughter, Zadie, until the third act requires her to be completely on board with everything, and supportive in a way that is uncharacteristic, but that's what is in the screenplay so that's how it just is. Ayub Khan Din is fun, playing a butler/chauffeur/assistant named Victor, perhaps because he's only required to make minor alterations to his amusing grumpiness, and Juliette Motamed works well as an actress who jumps at the chance to move from some staid and old-fashioned fare to something much sexier, but the rest is a big shrug of a film, although I am sure many viewers will be pleased enough by watching some hunky men learn some choreographed routines.
Maybe I'm way off here, but it didn't even seem as if the leads had any chemistry together. Okay, their first main encounter starts well, but it all fizzles out as soon as it's supposed to be heating up. Tatum still has skill, no doubt about it, but his character is taken on a journey that no longer feels worth being invested in. It's a silly fairytale, which would be all well and good if it wasn't bolted on to that lengthy reminder that there's a stage show wanting to keep those ticket sales high.
I wanted something distracting and slick. What I got was horrible writing from Carolin (that intermittent voiceover is shocking), flat direction from Soderbergh, a seriously mixed bag of acting performances, and a potential love story between two people who don't feel as if they have any strong connection to one another. So many scenes end up being completely inconsequential, including a preposterous sequence showing the performers spying on a woman who deals with regulation paperwork that could seriously affect their prospects, and the 112-minute runtime seems to stretch out forever. But maybe it's fitting that a Magic Mike movie feels lengthier than it actually is.
3/10
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