Mag­ic Mike’s Last Dance

The word ​‘mas­ter­piece’ gets bandied about a lot when it comes to cin­e­ma, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it: Mag­ic Mike XXL is a mas­ter­piece. While Steven Soderbergh’s Mag­ic Mike was a poignant take on the pit­falls of male strip­pers and the blue col­lar ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the 2008 reces­sion, Gre­go­ry Jacobs’ super­sized 2015 sequel was a much more light-heart­ed affair, as Mike Lane (Chan­ning Tatum) and his posse sad­dled up to put on the show of a life­time. The gyrat­ing and impec­ca­bly-chore­o­graphed dance sequences were inter­spersed with a lev­el of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment that was frankly unex­pect­ed, giv­ing depth to the Kings of Tampa.

Cen­tral to this was an empha­sis on the impor­tance of the fra­ter­ni­ty itself – Mike became him­self again when he reunit­ed with Ken (Matt Bomer), Big Dick Richie (Joe Man­ganiel­lo), Tito (Adam Rodríguez) and Tarzan (Kevin Nash) and in turn each mem­ber of their quar­tet was able to dis­cov­er their true pas­sion as they road tripped from Flori­da to South Car­oli­na. It’s curi­ous, then, that for the third film in the fran­chise – which comes eight years after XXL – writer Reid Car­olin would aban­don some­thing which audi­ences were so attached to, in favour of trans­plant­i­ng Mike to Lon­don and shrink­ing the cast down to the point the film revolves around a romance between Mike and his wealthy new patron Maxan­dra ​‘Max’ Men­doza (Salma Hayek Pin­ault, draft­ed in last minute to replace Thandi­we New­ton who had to leave the film mid-shoot due to health problems). 

The rela­tion­ships between Mike and his var­i­ous lovers (Cody Horn’s Brooke and Olivia Munn’s Joan­na in the orig­i­nal film, then Amber Heard’s Zoe in XXL) have always been one of the least com­pelling ele­ments of the fran­chise, with Car­olin seem­ing­ly miss­ing the point that Mike him­self is a fan­ta­sy: he’s the sen­si­tive, soul­ful blue col­lar babe with a sense of humour and hips that don’t lie. We’re not watch­ing the Mag­ic Mike films to see him find love in a hope­less place – in this instance Clapham – we’re watch­ing because of Tatum’s irre­press­ible charm and fast feet. 

As such, cen­ter­ing Mag­ic Mike’s Last Dance almost entire­ly on a will-they-won’t‑they romance imme­di­ate­ly makes the sto­ry­line a lit­tle less com­pelling, despite the easy chem­istry between Hayek Pin­ault and Tatum. It doesn’t help that Max isn’t an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter. She’s the wife of a British media mogul going through a messy divorce, and hires Mike to direct the show at her West End the­atre after a tryst in Mia­mi reawak­ens her lust for life. Hayek Pin­ault is a charis­mat­ic actress, but the char­ac­ter is paint­ed with such broad strokes it’s dif­fi­cult to real­ly invest in her, or her pre­co­cious teenage daugh­ter Zadie (Jemelia George) whose jar­ring nar­ra­tion inter­rupts the film at var­i­ous points to explain the anthro­po­log­i­cal his­to­ry of dance.

It’s not that Tatum isn’t charis­mat­ic enough to car­ry a film alone (Dog is great!) but Mag­ic Mike’s Last Dance cer­tain­ly feels like it’s miss­ing the cama­raderie that its ensem­ble pro­vid­ed. There are new faces in the form of the cast Mike assem­bles for his West End show, but these dancers are bare­ly giv­en names, let alone lines, most­ly appear­ing in back­ground shots react­ing to what­ev­er Mike and Max are argu­ing about. When Max insists on fly­ing over a star dancer from Italy, there’s a sense this might cause some fric­tion lat­er – but no. He’s just brought into the ensem­ble of assort­ed hand­some fea­ture extras with­out issue.

This half-baked feel­ing extends to the script – where the most dra­mat­ic moment involves a dis­agree­ment with West­min­ster council’s plan­ning depart­ment – and the film’s use of loca­tion. Trans­port­ing Mike from Mia­mi to Lon­don isn’t an inher­ent­ly bad idea, but Soderbergh’s deci­sion to shoot in only the most unsexy, touristy des­ti­na­tions of the cap­i­tal give the whole thing a grub­by, arti­fi­cial sheen. Case in point: a Pad­dy Pow­er shopfront promi­nent­ly fea­tures in mul­ti­ple scenes, and one of the few scenes out­side of the the­atre takes place in Liberty’s. For a film all about desire and pas­sion, Soder­bergh presents Lon­don as a city devoid of it, the cin­e­mat­ic equiv­a­lent of a faux-chum­my high street bank advert, and the less said about the dour colour grad­ing the better. 

At least there’s the danc­ing, right? Well…you’d be bet­ter off mosey­ing down to the Lon­don Hip­po­drome and grab­bing a tick­et for Mag­ic Mike Live, since this is effec­tive­ly a two-hour advert for the show (many of the show’s dancers fea­ture in the film). The open­ing num­ber between Tatum and Hayek Pin­ault is over­long to the point of induc­ing cringe, and while there’s absolute­ly no doubt that the new cast of dancers are tal­ent­ed, the recy­cled chore­og­ra­phy takes some of the shine off for any­one who’s seen the pre­vi­ous two films or the live show. 

The great­est dis­ap­point­ment of all comes in the grand finale, which involves a bal­let-inspired dance in the rain, copied almost beat-for-beat from Ali­son Faulk’s award-win­ning scene on It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia​‘s sea­son 13 finale. Faulk chore­o­graphed all three Mag­ic Mike films as well as the live show (along with her part­ners Tere­sa Espinosa and Luke Broad­lick) which makes the lack of inno­va­tion here par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing. Most heinous of all: the film only ges­tures towards Ginuwine’s ​‘Pony’ – the song most wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the fran­chise, and giv­en prime screen time in its predecessors. 

It’s not a com­plete dis­as­ter – there are some gen­uine­ly charm­ing moments, notably a Zoom call cameo from Richie, Ken, Tito and Tarzan – but most of the laughs come from how baf­fling the dia­logue is and how poor most of the sup­port­ing cast are (Juli­ette Motamed inno­cent) rather than inten­tion­al gags. 

After the highs of Mag­ic Mike XXL and even the som­bre dra­ma of the film that start­ed it all, this strange­ly unstar­ry three­quel feels like a mas­sive missed oppor­tu­ni­ty, lack­ing the charis­ma, humour and spec­ta­cle of what came before it. Of course it was always going to be a tall order to live up to the first two films, but even assessed on its own Mag­ic Mike’s Last Dance feels like a slap­dash effort, with a half-baked script and poor exe­cu­tion, not at all rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the tal­ent on and off cam­era. It’s a bum note for Mike to go out on – but tick­et sales for Mag­ic Mike Live should see an uptick at least.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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