Prime Time: Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023)

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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Prime Time: Dog (2022)

People always like to go on about their respect for those who have served time with the military. There’s always an element of peer pressure to view everyone in uniform as a hero. But the same peer pressure is rarely applied to ensuring things like decent benefits for veterans, free healthcare, and help with mental health issues (particularly PTSD), readjustment to civilian life, and even housing. Sometimes it feels very much like people are saying “thank you for your service, please let me swerve around your cardboard bed while I vote for someone who has you bottom on their list of self-enriching priorities.” Or maybe I am being a bit too bitter and cynical.

Anyway, Dog is a film that explores PTSD and rehabilitation, but it does so by pairing Channing Tatum up with a dog, Lulu, perhaps because those making the film knew that this would sugar-coat the message better than just having a damaged human character as the focus. Tatum plays Jackson Briggs, an ex-Ranger who really wants to get back into military service. He has somehow managed to convince someone that he is medically fit, despite having some major problems, but a superior officer needs to make a call to finalise everything. That call will be made, but on one condition. Briggs needs to take Lulu on a cross-country trip to attend the funeral of the young man who used to be her handler. That would be easy enough, if not for the fact that Lulu is as traumatised and nervous as many other soldiers who have been in the heat of battle as often as she was.

Co-directed by Reid Carolin and Tatum, both making their feature debuts in that role, Dog is a very easygoing, very pleasing, mix of drama and comedy that aims more for the former than the latter. Even the potentially funniest sequence (in which Tatum pulls off a scam to get a nice hotel room for one night) ends with a moment that brings everything back down to a sombre reality. It’s not depressing though, although it is emotionally manipulative and moving (I had something in my eye on a couple of occasions), and anyone thinking they know how it will all play out is probably going to be 100% correct with their predictions.

The script, by Carolin (from a story developed with Brett Rodriguez), is best when it maintains focus on that strong through line of the central character developments. There are a number of episodic side-steps, played out with varying degrees of success, and one or two moments could have easily been excised to craft a tighter, arguably better, film. Not that it overstays its welcome, thanks to the third act being better than all the rest, but the first half of the film suffers as it shows Tatum trying to enjoy some time away from his new traveling companion.

I will say that Tatum is good in his role, very believable as the damaged and desperate veteran wanting to get back to the only life he really knows, and there are enjoyable small turns from Kevin Nash, Jane Adams, Bill Burr, and Ethan Suplee, but the real star of the show is Lulu (played by a number of different canine stars, named Zaza, Britta, and Lana 5). If you are watching a movie named Dog then you should feel something for the dog. Although starting off perceived as a vicious and uncontrollable “monster”, Lulu is always just the same as Tarik’s character, a soldier deemed unfit for service who hasn’t known any other way of life. The parallels running between the two, and how they end up complementing one another, are as obvious as they are emotionally affecting.

There are things that could be improved, including that pacing in the first half. Thomas Newman’s score isn’t great, the music choices are bland, and it’s not a visually interesting piece of work. But the central pairing of Tatum and the dog, the battle between them, is easily good enough to recommend this to fans of either kind of movie star, be it hunk or hound.

7/10

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