Skip to main content

Magic Mike’s Last Dance review: a slight but stylish fantasy

Salma Hayek Pinault dances with Channing Tatum in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
Magic Mike's Last Dance
“Magic Mike's Last Dance never matches the exuberant heights of its 2015 predecessor, but it does still manage to deliver a fun, well-choreographed romantic fantasy.”
Pros
  • Salma Hayek Pinault's charismatic, confident lead performance
  • An unforgettable, rain-soaked finale dance number
  • Steven Soderbergh's deceptively breezy direction
Cons
  • Reid Carolin's lackluster script
  • The film's unconvincing central romance
  • Too many bland supporting characters

Not many Hollywood franchises have evolved as much as the Magic Mike series. The Channing Tatum-led franchise began in 2012 with a Steven Soderbergh-directed drama that was just as interested in showing off the bodies of its male characters as it was in highlighting their economic needs. Three years later, frequent Soderbergh collaborator Gregory Jacobs reinvented the franchise with Magic Mike XXL, which moved the series away from the somewhat dour tone of its predecessor and more toward the lighthearted spirit of a classic road trip comedy.

What Magic Mike XXL, which still ranks as one of the best sequels of the past 10 years, also did for its franchise was inject it with a heightened focus on the actual art of dance and stripping. The film felt, at times, like what would happen if a kindhearted frat comedy had been crossed with a Band Wagon-style, balletic Fred Astaire musical. It’s that admiration for the very act of performing that is most present in this year’s Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

The new film is surprisingly tamer than its two predecessors and feels a bit edgeless at times. What binds Magic Mike’s Last Dance to its franchise’s initial two installments, though, is its intense interest in exploring and celebrating female desire. The film is pure fantasy, and it’s often at its best whenever it actually manages to capture the sexy surreal quality that’s at the center of its story.

Salma Hayek Pinault touches Channing Tatum's abs in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
Warner Bros. Pictures

When Magic Mike’s Last Dance begins, its eponymous stripper-turned-craftsman, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), has fallen on hard times. Opening narration informs us that the furniture store he’d spent both Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL obsessing over was effectively shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. That unfortunate twist of fate forced Mike to go back to being a full-time gig worker. The film, therefore, picks up with him when he’s working as a bartender at a charity fundraiser in Miami hosted by the very rich future divorcée, Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault).

Through one of her close associates, Maxandra learns about Mike’s stripper past and offers to pay him for a personal dance. In the moments that follow, Mike gives Maxandra a lap dance better than any she could have ever imagined, which Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh shoots with equal amounts of exuberance and patience,. The two quickly form a powerful bond. Their dance leads to a night of intimacy, which ends with Maxandra offering to give Mike $60,000 to go to London with her for one month.

When he agrees, he’s surprised to learn that Maxandra has decided to name him the director of a new show based in the very same legendary London theater that she’s won as a part of her divorce proceedings. Maxandra tells Mike that she wants him to put on a show that will make every woman in the audience believe, rightfully so, that she can have “whatever she wants, whenever she wants.” The stripper-centric show that they inevitably produce is both a rejection of the stuffy, misogynistic play that Maxandra’s theater had previously put on and a celebration of intimacy and desire.

Channing Tatum and Kylie Shea stand in the rain together in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
Warner Bros. Pictures

To call the film’s story a loose continuation of what’s come before it would be a massive understatement. Outside of Tatum’s Mike Lane, Magic Mike’s Last Dance ultimately has little in common with its 2012 and 2015 predecessors. On the one hand, that aspect of the film allows it to feel freely experimental in a way that so many mainstream Hollywood sequels aren’t allowed to nowadays. On the other hand, Last Dance’s disconnection from the previous two Magic Mike films also leaves it struggling to carve out a genuinely unique identity for itself.

Tatum’s previous male Magic Mike co-stars, including Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer, only get the chance to appear in one brief Zoom call early on in Last Dance. Their disappointing absence robs the film of the delightful sense of camaraderie that helped elevate both Magic Mike and XXL, and it forces Last Dance to operate without a wide array of memorable supporting characters. That’s not to say that the film doesn’t fill itself with talented male dancers. On the contrary, Mike and Maxandra’s show is largely dedicated to letting its cast of dancers do their thing.

However, very few of the film’s performers actually get the chance to speak, which leaves many of them feeling disappointingly bland and lacking in personality. That fact only makes the absence of characters like Manganiello’s Big Dick Richie and Adam Rodríguez’s Tito feel that much more obvious, as does Last Dance’s intense focus on Maxandra and Mike’s thinly drawn romance.

Salma Hayek Pinault holds Channing Tatum's face in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
Warner Bros. Pictures

From their first very scene together, Hayek Pinault and Tatum are able to conjure a sexual chemistry together that helps many of Magic Mike’s Last Dance’s initial sequences pop. Hayek Pinault, in particular, doesn’t let the opportunity to play a confident and passionate character like Maxandra pass her by. She practically owns Magic Mike’s Last Dance from the moment she walks on screen for the first time. Unfortunately, Reid Carolin’s scattered, unfocused script prevents Maxandra and Mike’s romance from ever truly developing beyond their initial attraction to each other, which renders many of Last Dance’s biggest third-act beats strangely weightless.

While the film never manages to conjure either the exuberant energy of its predecessors or the romantic passion that its story demands, Magic Mike’s Last Dance does deliver a memorable visual and sensorial experience. Soderbergh and cinematographer Peter Andrews construct the film out of a series of efficient, snappy takes that not only ensure that Last Dance never slows down for too long, but also allow its numerous dance sequences to truly stand out. That’s particularly true of the film’s opening lap dance, which follows Hayek Pinault and Tatum as they prop each other up against multiple bookcases, shelving units, and pane glass windows.

Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek stand in a theatre lobby together in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
Warner Bros. Pictures

The film’s opening sequence is only topped by its grand finale, which follows Tatum’s Mike and an unnamed ballerina (played by dancer Kylie Shea) as they dance, slide, and grind onstage together for several minutes underneath a relentless artificial rainfall. The routine is as athletically impressive as anything you’ll likely see on the screen this year, and the way it’s able to feel both exhilaratingly performative and intimately sexual is, frankly, awe-inspiring. It’s one of the best sequences that the Magic Mike franchise has produced, and it’s the closest Last Dance ever comes to feeling like the satisfying final chapter that it’s designed to be.

To put that another way: While Magic Mike’s Last Dance never comes close to stacking up to its predecessors, the film’s celebration of creativity and dance makes it a fitting, if uneven, conclusion to a franchise that has never been afraid to not only bare it all, but also change things up along the way.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is now playing in theaters.

Editors' Recommendations

Alex Welch
Alex Welch is a TV and movies writer based out of Los Angeles. In addition to Digital Trends, his work has been published by…
7 most gruesome deaths in sci-fi movies
chestburster-alien

One of the great things about science fiction as a genre is that it can be almost anything. Science fiction can be hopeful and utopian, and even more often, sci-fi can be dystopian, nihilistic, and full of darkness. Sometimes, though, great science fiction can also be terrifying.

Many of the best science fiction movies ever made feature grisly kills the likes of which you rarely see outside of the horror genre. There are plenty of worthwhile kills that didn't even make the cut, as these seven deaths represent some of the most gruesome, shocking deaths in the history of sci-fi movies.
Kane -- Alien (1979)
Alien (1979) - alien bursts out of Kane's chest

Read more
Tubi supercharges its search with ChatGPT-4 and Rabbit AI
Press images and screenshots of the ChatGPT-powered Rabbit AI search features on Tubi on an iPhone.

Tubi — the ad-supported on-demand streaming service owned by Fox that's part of the FAST explosion — has more than 200,000 movies and TV shows at the ready for its 74 million monthly active users. The trick is figuring out what to watch. Or, rather, Tubi wants to figure out what you want to watch. And to that end, today it announced that it’s using a new search scheme to help you make your way through the platform.

Rabbit AI, as it’s being called, uses ChatGPT-4 (that’s a step above the free one you’ve probably been using) to go beyond what Tubi says its previous keyword searches could suss out. First is that the whole thing is much more conversational, like if you were talking to a buddy.

Read more
20 years later, The Rundown is still The Rock’s best action-hero role
Dwayne Johnson and Seann William Scott take a sweaty walk together.

Dwayne Johnson and Seann William Scott in The Rundown Universal Pictures / Universal Pictures

The moment Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson lumbered out of the wrestling ring and onto movie sets, Hollywood became determined to make him the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's easy to see the logic of that idea. With Arnold then leaving the industry for a new career in politics, a void had opened in the action-hero arena. And like the Austrian weightlifter who ruled the box office before him, The Rock had an impossibly herculean physique — a body made for blockbusters. Who better to fill the Terminator's profile than another hulking he-man looking to transition from athletics to acting?

Read more