Magic Mike’s Last Dance – Dir: Steven Soderbergh (Film Review)

0

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is a comedy-drama film by Steven Soderbergh that lacks both comedy and drama, while derivatively scraping the barrel of a franchise that lost its magic nearly a decade ago.

Starring: Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek Pinault, Jemelia George, Ayub Khan-Din, Juliette Motamed

 After losing his dream furniture business as the result of a global recession and a pandemic sucker-punch, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) is bartending at a charity fundraiser hosted by Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault), a wealthy socialite who later propositions Mike, first to perform a private lapdance and then to accompany her to London for a mystery job opportunity.

Mike is initially hesitant to accept the vague offer, but Maxandra capitalises on his financial vulnerability and offers him $60,000 to stay with her for one month, where he soon discovers he will not only be the director and choreographer of a reimagined stage performance at a heritage theatre, but must also navigate the complicated relationship Maxandra has with her recently estranged husband, and their sceptical daughter, Zadie (Jemelia George).

Under the watchful eye and supportive care of the diligent Victor (Ayub Khan Din), Maxandra’s long-serving and loyal butler, Mike and Maxandra search for a new roster of local and international dancing talent hoping their combined efforts will provide Mike with the financial and career stability he has long sought, and Maxandra with the freedom and independence she has long forgotten.

With original Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh and trilogy writer Reid Carolin back together, I had high hopes for Magic Mike’s Last Dance despite not knowing it even existed and having it appear out of nowhere, suggestively luring me in with the lingering memory of Pony by Ginuwine and a hazy recollection of Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn.

Due to a cinema malfunction, I was graced with the opening five minutes of this film twice, serving as an immediate testament to how unbearably dull this 122-minute display of watered-down mediocrity is.

Were you hoping for a nuanced insight into the portrayal of physical currency, socially repressed desires, and the love and comradery of a highly dedicated and troubled group of male strippers?

Hell, were you just hoping for some speaker-thumping Pony and even a hint of dick?

Let’s hope you like repetitive, pseudo-intellectual social commentary and strippers who are perpetually silent and never remove their jeans. Let’s hope you came to watch a love story between an oblivious, one-note Mike and a delirious, petulant and deluded Maxandra.

Let’s hope you enjoy the pointless and jarring callbacks to Soderbergh’s previous, superior films, and are treated to an H&M version of Ocean’s Eleven where the goal is apparently to induce a lustful psychological acid trip on a sour-faced bureaucrat through silent interpretive dance on a bus.

I honestly feel like I’m living inside a fever dream, because ​​once again, the two-and-a-half-minute trailer for Cocaine Bear that played before the film began elicited more excitement and satisfaction than the 112 minutes that followed.

The only way I can make sense of this film is to deduce that, instead of the original summary above, Mike just pelvic thrust Maxandra into a dick-induced coma in the opening 10 minutes of the film, and the rest of what follows is a nonsensical dimethyltryptamine fantasy as she drifts toward the eternal ether while her daughter delivers a voice-over eulogy based on napkin-philosophy and Social Buzzwords You Learned From Buzzfeed.

The only lingering sense of hope from this film is that it could be true to its title and that Magic Mike’s Last Dance never sees an encore, reimagining, or further desecration in the future.

But to reach that point, you’d first have to watch this rendition of 50 Shades of Beige meets Moulin Boojee, which at best could only serve as a Valentine’s Day movie if you’re planning to go on a pity date to the cinema with your grandmother, and at worst is proof that even the highest of directorial and acting talents are willing to degrade themselves for the cinematic equivalent of a soggy, discarded $1 bill.

Oxford Lamoureaux

 

 

Oxford Lamoureaux
Latest posts by Oxford Lamoureaux (see all)