Magic Mike's Last Dance

Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault send the Magic Mike franchise into retirement (yeah, right) with a sexy, sizzling sendoff.

Not to spoil anything that wouldn’t be obvious, but the ending this time is more than just the big show, offering closure to the narrative beyond the dancing. Stylistically, he’s less obviously “Soderbergh-ish” than when he ws merely a DP for XXL director Gregory Jacobs—there’s intro and outro narration and a hilarious “intermission,” although he needlessly edits footage we’ve already seen into the climax so we understand that dance is a metaphor for life. Since more moviegoers are likely coming to a Magic Mike movie for the moves than the plot, let it be stated the moves are outstanding, even if the movers remain mostly blank slates. Now a bartender, Mike is hired by Max—first for a dance—and then to come to the U.K. Instead, the action moves to London, which allows for new territory and new casting. [Magic Mike’s Last Dance](https://www.avclub.com/film/reviews/magic-mike-s-last-dance-2023) into gear—a $6,000 lap dance for overstressed arts patron Max (Salma Hayek Pinault)—Tatum’s physique flows into shapes not physically possible for most humans.

Magic Mike XXL was a feminist phenomenon. This final film is a disappointment ... There was a keen frisson of anticipation among the audience members as we sat ...

But the film itself is not exactly a beacon of light. There’s something forced and hollow-feeling about much of Magic Mike’s Last Dance: none of the spontaneity and silliness that made XXL so fun to watch. If that sounds absurd, well, yes: the plot never really was the point of Magic Mike, but here it’s taken to new lows.

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 ...

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). 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. 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. 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. 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 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.

Robert Rowinski, Kylee Vincent, Ervinas Merfeldas, Denys Samson, Laura Nolan, Kevin McGahern, Brooke Scullion and Rory O'Neill aka Panti Bliss were all in ...

With everything on the line, once Mike discovers what she truly has in mind, he has to whip into shape to pull it off. Kevin McGahern took the opportunity for a night out with his wife Siobhan, while his dance partner Laura Nolan was accompanied by her beau Matthew MacNabb. For what he hopes will be one last hurrah, Mike heads to London with a wealthy socialite (Hayek Pinault) who lures him in with an offer he can’t refuse…

Director Steven Soderbergh defends and explains why the surprising choice was made to focus on "genuine emotion" over racy content.

"I want it to be the Super Bowl of stripping. Since then, Tatum has obviously come around and has voiced big desires for the final film saying, [Steven Soderbergh](https://movieweb.com/person/steven-soderbergh/) says they're forgoing the nudity. Now, in the final film, director The first film may have owed some of its $167-million-box-office success to the shocking amount of male nudity from oh-so-sexy stars, such as Tatum, Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughy. [Magic Mike](https://movieweb.com/magic-mike/) trilogy, [Magic Mike's Last Dance](https://movieweb.com/movie/magic-mikes-last-dance/), will hit theaters this Friday, February 10th 2023.

In this sequel, Channing Tatum's Mike Lane tries to pep up a stale West End play with some of his trademark dance moves.

The last time “Titanic” received a theatrical release of any kind was in 2017, a rather low-key 20th anniversary rerelease, which paled in comparison to the first release of the 3D version of the movie in 2012. It also probably won’t come close to the 2012 re-release with Marvel’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” opening in just one week. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will report any box office, but it’s the directorial debut of Benjamin Carron (“The Crown”), starring Julianne Moore, Sebastian Shaw, Briana Middleton and Justice Smith. Furthermore, A24 is releasing the crime-drama “Sharper” in New York and L.A. Opening on Super Bowl weekend might hurt the movie’s Sunday, but the commercials for the movie are saying that it opens “this Valentine’s Day weekend,” just to remind anyone who may have forgotten. The only other wide release is a 25th Anniversary re-release of James Cameron’s “Titanic” into 1,800 theaters, including 3D screens. [Channing Tatum](https://www.goldderby.com/t/channing-tatum/)’s “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” who is no stranger to the Super Bowl weekend, having starred in “Dear John” opposite Amanda Seyfried way back in 2010, which launched on Super Bowl weekend to the tune of $30.5 million. Hayek Pinault has also been keeping busy through the pandemic, most recently by providing her voice in DreamWorks Animation’s sequel “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” ($151.2 million gross so far), and in 2021 she starred in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” ($53.8 million), Marvel’s “The Eternals” ($164.9 million), and the sequel “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” ($38 million). The previous movie, “Magic Mike XXL,” opened in July 2015 with just $12.9 million, which was down quite a bit from the original “Magic Mike,” which opened with $39.1 million three years earlier. It’s been over five years since Tatum last teamed with Soderbergh for 2017’s “Logan Lucky,” playing the title character in that movie, too, but it tapped out below $28 million. That could help the movie get a rare bump on Saturday and then another one on Tuesday. Tatum has reteamed with Steven Soderbergh for “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” but they’ve brought on a secret weapon in [Salma Hayek](https://www.goldderby.com/t/salma-hayek/) Pinault.

In celebration of the upcoming romantic holiday, 'Atlanta & Company' is giving away a special Valentine's gift basket that includes magical hunky sugar ...

The third installment, directed by Steven Soderbergh, features Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek in a movie that only briefly lives up to its stars.

For a few glorious minutes, this is the movie these two gorgeous, criminally charming actors deserve, but its magic is fleeting—as unreliable as a pair of tearaway pants. The movie is driven by some blurry logic about how important it is for women to demand what they want—as opposed to just succumbing to the fantasy offered by beautiful, raunchy, funny performers, which is the kind of bliss the earlier movies offered so unapologetically. Worst of all, for reasons that make no sense in the context of her character or the movie, Max loses her own nerve when it comes to standing up for what she wants. For Tatum, it may as well be 2012, the year of the first [Magic Mike](https://time.com/3943012/magic-mike-xxl-changes-from-original/) movie, directed, as this new one is, by [Steven Soderbergh](https://time.com/5524677/high-flying-bird-netflix-sports-movies/) and written by Reid Carolin. One problem may be that the opening scene of Last Dance is so blazingly amorous the rest of the movie can’t hope to measure up—after that first 20 minutes or so, the picture has the clumsiness of a muffed backflip, and the letdown is hard to get over. The performers end up looking droopy and bedraggled by the end. And while all of this sounds like fun, it’s at this point that the movie starts to stumble. It turns out that Max wants other women to feel as she does, to take control of their lives and seek the things they really want. The two end up in bed, and though Max isn’t looking for anything permanent, it seems her evening with Mike has renewed her spirit. He balks at first, but eventually succumbs—in a witty preamble to the performance, he moves flower vases off tables for safety’s sake, and shifts chairs around the room for use as props later. She invites him to come to London with her, offering him a job whose details she at first refuses to reveal. [Channing Tatum](https://time.com/4320562/magic-mike-live-photo-abs-channing-tatum/) time is the equivalent of 2 years for normal humans.

REVIEW: As a celebration of dance and blunt reminder that asking for consent is still the very sexiest thing anyone can do, this is a pile of fun.

But with Tatum and a very game Salma Hayek Pinault in the leads – and a support cast of strong British comedy performers, the ramshackle plotting is at least in safe hands. And the very next day he is on a private jet to London, having been promised some sort of job for the next month by his newfound playmate. But when he is summoned by her to "do one of his dances" – for a good amount of cash – Mike delivers. One of my favourite places in Wellington to see a film is in the southern suburbs – and they seem to think there's a market for 10am screenings of new releases. The occasion was a Ladies Night preview session of Magic Mike's Last Dance. The venue was a multiplex in Porirua, north of Wellington.

Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) and his furniture business have been hit by the pandemic, and he hasn't seen his friends for years. When wealthy divorcée Max ...

Save an impossibly sexual and risqué opening dance between Tatum and Hayek and a pleasant jukebox homage to the live show (which nods more to Tatum’s rain-sodden dancing days in 2006’s seminal dance film Step Up than his beloved showmanship as Mike), the film plays more like a Working Title rom-com (kooky British tropes of a fussy butler and cutaways to the London Eye aplenty) than a seductive, explosive picture that gives women what they want. It makes sense, then, to dedicate the third and final film in the franchise to the spin-off live performance, London West End smash-hit Magic Mike Live – except that Magic Mike’s Last Dance feels more like a contemporary dance GCSE project (led by grating anthropological narration and clumsy pacing) than a truly satisfying Magic Mike film. Last Dance, meanwhile, sees Mike whisked away by Max ( [Salma Hayek Pinault](https://www.empireonline.com/people/salma-hayek/)) to make her ex-husband jealous and put on a stripping show in his beloved theatre – except this time, Mike’s all on his own.

Though Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault are thoroughly charismatic as the leads, Soderbergh's return to the franchise seems surprisingly unsure of ...

Mike is appealingly attuned to the wants and needs of others; his willingness to extend consideration and care underpinned Magic Mike XXL to great effect. The script mentions structural inequality and the levelling potential of dance but the movie’s attention is fixed on luxurious lifestyles and beautiful bodies. Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, 2015) made him a kind of muse, catalyst and fairy godmother, enabling the pleasure, expression and agency of various others. We first met him in Soderbergh’s Magic Mike (2012), a kind of morality play in which, as he hits his 30s, the character faces a choice between callous self-interest and care for himself and others. Last Dance finds him plucked from bartending by wealthy sociality Max (Salma Hayek Pinault), who is splitting from her husband in London and commissions Mike to produce a scandalous show in the theatre owned by her ex’s family. Magic Mike’s Last Dance is the third (and, its title suggests, final) instalment in the story of Mike Lane, a character inspired by producer/star Channing Tatum’s own experiences working on the Miami stripping (or male entertainment) scene.

The original Magic Mike movie way back in 2012 was a huge success for Soderbergh, and the film's star, Channing Tatum, whose own life as a former 18-year-old ...

Cancel anytime.

In both a noble gesture toward exhibition after the studio's Project Popcorn, and in a means to monetize downstream revenues, Warner Bros is taking what was ...

The five-day running totals for both 80 for Brady and Knock at the Cabin are tied at $16.4M. Paramount will also see a strong hold from 80 for Brady which beat Universal’s Knock at the Cabin on both Monday ($1.2M) and Tuesday ($2.5M). 8 on the all-time list of highest-grossing movies in U.S./Canada with $659.3M (Avatar: The Way of Water has yet to catch up, with a running total through Tuesday of $638.6M in the No. The best re-release debut for Titanic was in 2012, when a 3D version opened to $17.2M, and legged out to $57.9M. Tatum has a long history of opening movies in February, often around Valentine’s Day and/or Super Bowl weekend and pulling in his female demo, read 2012’s The Vow ($41.2M opening), 2010’s Dear John ($30M opening) and even last year’s Dog ($14.9M opening). The studio has booked a swath of theaters known for filling their capacities and avoided overbooking the movie in the same zone to fuel demand. While the majors will complain about how bad Super Bowl weekend is at the box office, they’ve been able to capitalize on what has been a two-day weekend: i.e. The movie stands at No. [Titanic](https://deadline.com/tag/titanic/). Phil, Young Sheldon and 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way. 1: Titanic apparently is tracking better than the fall re-issue of Avatar ($10.5M opening) with a shot at double-digit millions in 2,400 theaters and the Channing Tatum-Salma Hayek Pinault threequel also having a potential $10M debut with the chance for more heading into Valentine’s Day Tuesday. [Magic Mike’s Last Dance](https://deadline.com/tag/magic-mikes-last-dance-2/), and putting into 1,500 theatrical locations this weekend.

The director also weighs in on the impact of Marvel on theatrical releases, the popular movies debate around the Oscars and how Salma Hayek Pinault helped ...

“The issue of what happens to the audience is truly a chicken-and-the-egg thing. “I believe in artists’ ability to figure shit out.” “In cultural terms, they don’t matter in the same way that they did twenty years ago. “I think it played to the dynamic she has with her daughter and resulted in one of my favorite lines in the whole movie — when she says, ‘Mom.’ Now I look at it and go, that’s how it always should have been,” he wrote. “So, we’ll find out if that’s really the issue or if it’s a deeper philosophical problem, which is the fact that movies don’t occupy the same cultural real estate that they used to,” he added. At another point in the interview, Soderbergh explains why his list of what he watched and read in 2022 doesn’t include any superhero titles. Nor does he believe exhibitors are the villains, even as Marvel sequels take up chunks of showings at theaters across the country. We all spent hours and hours in rooms rebuilding it, rethinking it to make it specific. At a certain point, you have to surrender to what the cinema gods want for you.” Following Newton’s departure, the movie kept the same actress who played her daughter, pivoting the duo from a biological to an adopted relationship. “Nothing I ever saw was accurate, and there’s really no upside for anybody involved in litigating this or excavating it because I consider it private,” the director said about Newton’s departure. With Newton’s departure, Hayek Pinault stepped in, helping the team adjust for its more female-focused point of view.

Director Steven Soderbergh unpacks the hybrid release plans for Channing Tatum's latest "Magic Mike" film.

This weekend, however, “Last Dance” will have to compete with a re-issue of James Cameron’s “Titanic.” “Magic Mike XXL” opened to just $13 million in 2015, but grinded out to close to $70 million in its domestic run on a reported $15 million budget. “The film is showing up at a good time because it’s such a joyful movie,” Soderbergh says. “Finding a good scale to put something out wide enough to entice fans of the Magic Mike Universe but not overspend.” “I felt very aligned with it philosophically, in terms of how they really wanted to capture that sense of care.” I immediately jumped on the phone and said I would like to make a movie about how Mike creates a live show.

Soderbergh and Carolin seem to have misunderstood the most basic appeal of their own franchise: We come to Magic Mike movies to watch Channing Tatum and, if at ...

As Mike is preparing to give Max the shirt-free bump-and-grind business in that genuinely hot early scene, she tells him that there will be “no happy endings.” As it turns out, she is wrong both about that night (they do wind up having sex) and about the Magic Mike franchise. The crew of stripper buds who road-tripped with Mike in the last movie—played with scruffy charm by Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Kevin Nash, and Adam Rodriguez—appear only once, in the grid of an overseas Zoom call, while the pack of newly recruited studs hired to put on the London show never emerge as characters with proper names, much less personalities. For most of its nearly two-hour running time, Magic Mike’s Last Dance keeps Tatum in the role not of performer but of impresario, casting and rehearsing a male-striptease show for the London theater that Max, a wealthy divorcée, has inherited as part of the property settlement. To do so they must recruit a team of talented male dancers from around the continent—cue a slickly edited audition montage full of eye-popping demonstrations of athleticism—and train them in the art of audience-pleasing sex-act simulation. The movie’s premise, considerably more slender than the broad torso of its hero, is that after a single night of contractual lap-dancing and non-contractual lovin’, Max has seen enough to know that Mike is the right man to help her get her personal and professional groove back by revamping the theater’s current production, a successful but starchy costume drama called Isabel Ascendant, into a no-holds-barred strip extravaganza. [Magic Mike](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2012/06/magic_mike_starring_channing_tatum_reviewed_.html), a largely downbeat fable in which economic hard times drive a hunky aspiring furniture-maker to earn his living as a stripper at a Tampa nightclub, neither he nor the movie’s star, Channing Tatum, could have known that, more than a decade later, that gritty little indie would have inspired a glitzy multimedia franchise.

It is, of course, the third in the series of films about the stripper and dirty-dancer Mike Lane, played by Channing Tatum. The trilogy, which spans ...

He becomes friends with Max and Roger’s whip-smart teen-age daughter, Zadie (Jemelia George), a pleasant presence and an obvious stereotype; and he relies on the steadfast Victor, who, after the separation of Max and Roger, went with her because she has the “bigger balls.” But the movie’s feminist trappings come with baggage. In “Magic Mike XXL,” from 2015 (on which Soderbergh was the executive producer, the cinematographer, and the editor), the protagonist is lured back into that milieu for the joy of friendship, for the pleasure and the power of getting a rise from his audience, and for the hell of it. There isn’t a whole lot of process that goes into the making of the dances, though there are a few emblematic moments, as when, during a rehearsal, Mike shows other dancers how to “keep the connection” with an actress onstage. Soderbergh can’t be bothered to show the magic of his inspiration in devising it, but he makes sure to signal Mike’s intention in crafting it—as a personal story and a public declaration of his love for Max. But it’s money that makes the entire setup possible, including the six thousand dollars that Max offers the reticent Mike to dance in her living room, the many millions that fund her daily life, and whatever hefty sums it takes to sustain her theatrical enterprise and tear it up and put Mike in charge of its new identity. Speaking about his own film in recent weeks, Soderbergh more modestly likens it to his “process films,” such as the heist movies in the “Ocean’s” trilogy. First, she buys Mike an expensive new wardrobe at Liberty, and her butler-slash-factotum, Victor (Ayub Khan Din), installs him in a room of her mansion-like town house. Discussing the movie in July of last year, Soderbergh likened it to “ [Magic Mike](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/magic-mike-the-musical),” from 2012, which Soderbergh directed at a moment when he had already announced his impending retirement from filmmaking, looks ruefully at the gap between talent and its exploitation, between the quest to become an independent artisan and the commercial and personal pressures that get in the way. But then, when the simulacrum of sex turns into a one-night stand, he refuses her money. I was right, sort of—after a hiatus in which he produced (but didn’t direct) the sequel “ [Magic Mike XXL](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/magic-mike-xxl-grabs-our-convoluted-fantasies-of-pleasure)” and directed the TV series “ [The Knick,](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/real-knick-s-josephine-baker-fighting-for-life)” he has, since 2017, made eight feature films, of which the latest, “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” opens February 10th. [Steven Soderbergh](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/steven-soderbergh) announced, in 2011, that he was about to retire from movies and devote himself to painting, I didn’t believe it.

Channing Tatum returns as Florida's favorite male exotic dancer, romancing a restless socialite played by Salma Hayek Pinault.

He and his fellow dancers perfected a choreography of swagger and surrender, an enactment of conquest that encoded submission as the highest form of gallantry. This man is so affable, so grounded, so gentlemanly that he achieves a kind of blank passivity. He isn’t just supposed to be a camped-up embodiment of the perfect man, but the real thing. After jetting over to London, where Mike is installed in a guest room, he and Max embark on a tricky creative collaboration. Each of the “Magic Mike” films has explored the nexus of sex, art and money from a different angle. Like its predecessors, “Last Dance” never forgets that it’s a musical at heart. In “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” the final chapter in a trilogy about lust, ambition and abdominal fitness in the modern age, Mike is focused on the desires of one woman in particular, a wealthy Londoner named Maxandra Mendoza. Mike’s vocation as a stripper had been to embody a male object of female fantasy — or, given Tatum, Carolin and Soderbergh’s joint authorship, a male idea of what women long for. “XXL” emphasized the extravagant pleasure of selling oneself as a high-end commodity and the aesthetic fulfillment of satisfying a customer. [“Magic Mike”](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/movies/magic-mike-by-steven-soderbergh-with-channing-tatum.html) (2012), which was followed by “Magic Mike XXL” (directed by Gregory Jacobs) in 2015. [“What does a woman want?”](http://freudquotes.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-does-woman-want.html) Sigmund Freud famously confessed that he had spent most of his career flummoxed by that question. “Magic Mike” was about how, in a precarious labor market, a gig worker might wrest dignity and autonomy from conditions rife with exploitation.

It's a stunning sequence that helps conclude the Magic Mike trilogy of films, each packed with their own breathtaking dance set pieces. The first two films in ...

“I’ve seen a room full of two groups of people who literally don’t speak the same language, and who have been put into this space. The intensity with which Soderbergh describes this scene and the making of it might come across as odd to those who haven’t embraced by the Magic Mike films. Set in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the movie is an unmistakeable condemnation of corporate capitalism, greed, and the betrayal of the American dream. The first Magic Mike film, released in 2012, follows Tatum and his crew of fellow dancers under the direction of Matthew McConaughey’s character Dallas, as they try to make ends meet and save up for a move out of Tampa Bay, Florida. “I live or die on the choices I make on set,” he says, somewhat dramatically. “We agreed to make the movie and to finance it ourselves. “The last one he mentioned, he kind of tossed it off like ‘Oh and then there’s this thing about when I was a stripper in Tampa.’ He eventually won for Traffic, and made a hard pivot with his next film: the hugely popular Ocean’s 11, which brought together two of his previous collaborators in George Clooney and Julia Roberts. At 26, he made his directorial debut with Sex, Lies and Videotape which won the Palmes D’or at Cannes in 1989 and saw him hailed as a prodigy. The leading man was Channing Tatum, and though he has starred in his fair share of action movies, Soderbergh wasn’t directing him in a World War II film. “Yeah I like the idea,” Soderbergh says he told Tatum. Tatum took his advice and started working on the first iteration of what would become Magic Mike.