Review: Magic Mike's Last Dance

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Less a raunchy stripper movie than a hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show throwback dance movie, Steven Soderbergh's "Magic Mike's Last Dance" is the first legitimately fun movie I've seen in a year that, so far, has been populated by bleak and gloomy movies. The picture is enjoyable and funny, and although it often plants its tongue firmly in cheek, it takes its implausible scenario serious enough to deliver the goods - in this case, a series of impressive dance sequences.

Set just after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, "Magic" Mike Lane has lost his furniture business and is tending bar at parties thrown by rich people in Miami. At one such party, he is recognized by a young woman at whose bachelorette party he once performed some years prior. This tidbit is passed along to Max (Salma Hayek), the rich lady throwing the party, and she solicits Mike to give her a dance that, well, materializes into something more.

In a scenario that I'm just sure happens every day, Max tells Mike that she wants to hire him after he gave her a night she won't soon forget - no, not as a gigolo but rather to put on a show at an historic London theater that her family owns. She tells him she wants him to create a performance that will give to other women what the dance he performed for - and on - her gave to her.

Once you've squared yourself away with this fantasy that feels like a reverse "Pretty Woman," the film kicks into overdrive. Mike and Max - during one of the film's best scenes - travel around London and watch street performers do their stuff with the intention of enlisting them for the dance show that Mike is putting together. It will replace a play currently running at the Max's theater, although Mike decides to keep the woman who plays the lead in that performance.

Mike also befriends Zadie (Jemilia George), Max's adopted daughter, and has grudging respect for Max's droll butler, Victor (Ayub Khan Din). While Tatum brings the same amount of charisma to the lead role - and he impressively is one of the few current Hollywood stars who can actually dance - Hayek's character is given equal billing. 

Max is in the process of getting divorced from her controlling British husband, and her project at the theater with Mike is an example of her trying to flex her newfound freedom. It helps that Tatum and Hayek have good chemistry - but it's not just of the romantic sort. The two are also business and creative partners, and the rehearsal scenes in which they spar over the direction of the performance make their partnership compelling.

But ultimately, "Magic Mike's Last Dance" is an old-fashioned dance movie. On that front, it delivers. The final third of the movie captures the show that Mike has put together - which may rival the actual Magic Mike review in which Tatum is involved that is currently performing in London - and it's a spectacle of lighting, music, dance and high energy. There's an especially captivating performance in which Mike and a young woman dance and glide across the stage in a rainy setting.

Soderbergh directed the first "Magic Mike" movie, which was a surprisingly good, raunchy and funny story about the trials and tribulations of a male stripper in Florida. The second "Magic Mike" movie - which was sans Soderbergh - could best be described as a strange male bonding odyssey across the South. 

This latest - and seemingly final - entry, which finds Soderbergh back at the helm, is nothing less than a goofy, charming and entertaining fantasy. It's directed with panache, its dance performances involve great skill and it has two likable leads. Most people attending a screening of the film will go in knowing exactly what they'll get - and they'll get it. The surprises here have nothing to do with plot, but rather how effectively the filmmakers pull it off.