Directed By Steven Soderbergh

Starring – Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek, Caitline Gerard

The Plot – Mike (Tatum) takes to the stage again, following a business deal that went bust, leaving him broke and taking bartender gigs in Florida. Mike heads to London with a wealthy socialite (Hayek) who lures him with an offer he can’t refuse.

Rated R for sexual material and adult language

Magic Mike’s Last Dance | Official Trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

Soderbergh returns home to the franchise he helped helm, exuding with it the valued kind of artistic expression and cinematic quality that surprised a lot of audiences in their first experience with the debut film. Here, Steven embeds his presentation in a barrage of neon lighting and gritty cinematography to feed into the exotic underground of London erroticism, but easily his most alluring aspect is in the subtle movements of the lens and stimulating editing, which not only grant an immersive quality to stageshow sequences of complex choreography, pitting audiences in the minds of the character’s framing the vantage points, but also feels like the one defining characteristic of presentation that ties the three films together in continuity, flashing with the flurry of pizazz and radiance that matches its male ensemble beat for beat in sensory stimulation. On top of this, the intricacies of the sound design were much appreciated in my interpretation, with the film’s soundtrack of sexy and sensual favorites echoing a relevancy of distance and environmental noise that it continuously fights off. This certifies the integrity of the atmospheric elements, but beyond that proves the mixer carefully did their homework in capturing authenticity, rounding off a perfect score for the production that brought the thunder in the climactic final chapter. Aside from technical elements, the performances are mostly satisfactory, with Tatum’s exubberance of charm and unfiltered charisma commanding an unshakeable stage presence, and Ayub Khan Din breaking through the cultural stratosphere with a turn that steals each scenes he invades with comedic brilliance. Considering most of the movie’s comedy fails with humility, his appeal and benefit during scenes of levity are much appreciated, and even though his time is limited, my favorite parts of the movie are easily the moments he shares the screen with Tatum, giving us a break from the seamlessness and confidence that Channing dominates with physical effortlessness. On the subject of such, the dance sequences, while unfortunately sparse in their allowance, are as impressive as ever, combining creativity and passion in sensuality with smooth, fluid motions that rhythmically groove with the beats of the accommodating song, while giving the ladies plenty to appreciate in physical specimens of all shapes and colors.

NEGATIVES

If there’s one thing that you wouldn’t expect a Magic Mike movie to be, it’s boring, and that’s unfortunately what we’re saddled with in the defining chapter of this trilogy. This is because the screenplay from Reid Carolin is littered with problems, but the biggest being that this never feels like a movie about Mike, and instead about this middle aged woman (Hayek) committing herself to something that can give her life meaning. We sift through this sentiment for the opening half hour of the movie, a period so dry and drifting that we practically beg for the enthusiasm of the stage, and in the case of the eventual progression, slug through dialogue so childish and downright embarassing that it feels lifted from a Cinemax late night special. On top of this, the film is sadly plagued by pretentousness, between the contemporary impulses of attempting the female empowerment angle, to pointlessly plastered overhead narration constantly throughout the film, this movie feels soulless, trading in its escapism factor in cheap thrills for social and artistic commentary that I truthfully couldn’t care less about. On the former, the idea of stage participants seeking permission before chisled dancers grind on them is laughable at best considering this is first and foremost a strip joint, and on the latter, the film wants so badly to charm up and polish exotic dancing that it deliberately goes out of its way to certify it with poetic excerpts read by one of the film’s actresses, but in reality coming across as annoying hinderances each time they deviate away from the unraveling narrative in the storytelling. The script is also paced problematically, with the aforementioned first act stalling after a sizzling dance number in the opening ten minutes, and then the second act following it up with a conflict and execution that isn’t half as consequential as the film would like it to be. At no point throughout the journey does the film even remotely earn the extent of its 107 minute run time, and with as many pocketed moments of pause that pertains to the development, it feels like the film could certainly trim or downright omit a few of these scenes to get them down to 90 minutes, before the ladies of the audience get antsy at already waiting as many as forty minutes between stage sequences. Aside from the script, the chemistry between Tatum and Hayek simply didn’t work for me, especially as the evolution of her character takes some tricky turns during the second half that tested my investment or appreciation of her influence, in turn watering down the believability of their romanticism that at least initially permeated terrifically in the opening act, before escaping by the film’s midway point. And finally, while the film does attain the coveted R-rating that its material require to enhance the experience, the overall execution feels a bit tame and toothless to taste the taboos of temptation, leaving it a bit strained to even be classified as such. The language is there, but delivered forcefully in the dialogue in ways that never come across as natural or effective as scaling the magnitude of the predicament they sprung from, but the sexual material as the rating above indicates feels plucked from any music video that you’ve seen after 2003. I don’t necessarily require nudity for the engagement, but considering we live in a world where risky television ages us twenty years over the course of one hour, the sequences here could’ve definitely pushed the envelope a bit more and given us gratification for why it invaded the silver screen, instead of HBOMAX, as originally intended.

OVERALL
“Magic Mike’s Last Dance” isn’t quite the spine-tingling, toe-clinching climax that we deserved for this otherwise solid franchise. While the dance numbers involving gravity-defining choreography and meticulous music choices offer a temporary reprieve from the sum of their parts, the film is often entertainingly flat and toothlessly taboo as a final chapter, leaving its last dance plagued by the stage fright that ultimately omit some of the air of its legacy that it spent two superior films building.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+