Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Director Steven Sodebergh and writer Reid Carolin bring Mike Lane and his dancing talents back to the screen. Mike’s (Channing Tatum) life has taken a downward turn and he finds homes Bartending at a fund raiser where he catches the eye of the wealthy host Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault) and when she pays Mike to share his dancing talents she is won over. So won over she flies Mike to London to direct a show at the theatre she has gained control over as part of divorce negotiations with her husband Roger (Alan Cox). Staying at Maxandra’s home with her daughter Zadie (Jamelia George) and chauffeur, Victor (Ayin Kahn-Din), Mike has to work with Maxandra to find dancers and a theme to pull together a show in four weeks, while getting around attempts to close them down.

The original Magic Mike films, had some kind of narrative however, at the end of 112 minutes of this installment, I had no idea what in earth was going on. It is, sadly, a complete mess. It follows one unrealistic storyline after another leaving most of them unresolved, probably realising they were rubbish and nobody was going to care. Then we get to the final act and I had literally no idea how we’d got there from what had gone before. There was perhaps a narrative thread in there that explained it, but I’d long since stopped caring.

Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault are both really enjoyable screen presence’s. But neither of them can elevate the rubbish they had presented to them here.

My grown up daughter said to me that this feels like it exists to promote the Magic Mike Live stage show and it’s hard to see any other point in its existence. It makes sense that originally this was made for streaming because it lacks any cinematic quality.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is a terrible mess of a film. The story is almost non-existent and the bits that exist are nonsense or uninteresting. It’s not a patch on its predecessors and feels like an early contender for one of the worst films I’ll see this year. Let’s hope it really is the last dance.