The Big Picture

  • The grand finale of Magic Mike's Last Dance is a breathlessly hyperkinetic explosion of song, dance, and graceful bodies in motion, making it the definition of "pure cinema."
  • The film takes place in a fancy London theater, a departure from the skeezy strip venues of Mike Lane's past.
  • Magic Mike's Last Dance is a character study of middle-aged disaffection that evolves into a dry British screwball farce, showcasing the practical demands of realizing a creative production on one's own terms.

The grand finale of Magic Mike’s Last Dance, whatever you end up thinking of the alternately melancholic and endearingly meandering film that precedes it, truly is one for the books. The climax of Steven Soderbergh’s third (his second as director) and ostensibly final film in the Magic Mike trilogy is a sustained, breathlessly hyperkinetic, and at times, very literally, wet explosion of song, dance, and graceful bodies in motion. For so many of us, it is the definition of "pure cinema." Oh, and for reasons we’ll expand upon in the following paragraphs, the whole thing is being staged at a hoity-toity London theater, of all places: a far cry from the skeezy, low-rent strip venues that could be called Mike Lane’s (Channing Tatum) stomping grounds.

Magic Mikes Last Dance Film Poster
Magic Mike's Last Dance
R
Drama
Comedy

Mike 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 who lures him with an offer he can't refuse.

Release Date
February 10, 2023
Director
Steven Soderbergh
Cast
Channing Tatum , Salma Hayek Pinault , Caitlin Gerard , Ethan Lawrence
Runtime
112 minutes
Main Genre
Drama

What Are the Magic Mike Movies About?

Channing Tatum’s Mike Lane, the flawlessly chiseled and selfless himbo king himself, was first introduced to the world in 2012’s original zeitgeist-baiting Magic Mike, which has since been canonized as the Male Stripper Movie to end all Male Stripper Movies. Both the first Magic Mike and its sequel have a different flavor, or spice, if you will. Magic Mike's Last Dance offers no exception to the rule, right up until that grand finale we teased earlier.

Soderbergh’s first movie – breezy and carefree, until it's decidedly not – wallows in the humid, orange-tinted sleaze of the Sunshine State, while Magic Mike: XXL is about the concept of hedonism as altruism. It's a film where Joe Manganiello provides a gas station clerk with a low-key sexual awakening to the ebullient sounds of the Backstreet Boys hit, “I Want It That Way.” Magic Mike’s Last Dance, then, ends up being its own thing: a sunny character study of middle-aged disaffection that eventually blossoms into a kind of dry British screwball farce with shades of Ernst Lubitsch, replete with a droll butler side character and omniscient, Jane Austen-esque voiceover from a young female narrator.

Of course, unpacking the movie’s big finish requires some context. When we catch up with Mike in Last Dance's early goings, he’s looking down the barrel of 40, and his furniture business has gone belly-up, yet another casualty of the brutal pandemic economy. Retired from the thrusting and gyrating of his old life, Mike makes ends meet by taking bartending gigs in Miami, which brings him into the orbit of Maxine “Max” Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault), a moneyed socialite whose inner spark has been dimmed by years of romantic disenchantment. In other words, her husband’s cheating on her.

'Magic Mike's Last Dance' Sends Channing Tatum to London

Salma Hayek and Channing Tatum doing a pinky promise in Magic Mike's Last Dance
Image via Warner Bros

As a means of exacting revenge, Max lures Mike out of his self-imposed exile with a promise of $6,000 for an intimate private dance (understandably, she balks at his initial asking price of $60,000). Soderbergh knows we’ve been waiting for this moment, and when it arrives, it’s a showstopper, charged up with all the delirious acrobatic fervor that makes these movies so special. The primary plot engine of Last Dance, though, is what brings us to the London theater world, where the film's final act unfolds. We come to learn that Max has been put in charge of a stodgy stage show at the fictional Rattigan theater, one that is being bogged down by indifferent acting, a lack of creative direction, and gender politics that are, to put it politely, regressive.

In hopes of revamping what is all but predestined to be a dud, Max cherry-picks Mike and a cadre of toned new dancers and allows the onetime Tampa king a chance to stage a show of his own. Much of this Last Dance involves the gradual, occasionally meandering build-up to the big finale, plus the myriad of setbacks and technical obstacles that Mike and Max face in attempting to bring their vision to life. By the time Mike and Max’s show actually happens, with about thirty to forty minutes left in the runtime, the fact that the dancers are even making their way to the stage seems like a miracle.

'Magic Mike's Last Dance' Gives Channing Tatum's Titular Character a New Purpose

In so many ways, Magic Mike’s Last Dance's ending reveals at least part of what the franchise was about all along; that is, the practical demands of realizing a creative production on one’s own terms. Part of the joy of how Soderbergh chooses to bring Last Dance to a close comes with observing how genuinely stoked Mike Lane seems about having just directed a show instead of merely choosing to dance in one. Not that there's anything wrong with dancing, of course; the movie's arch voiceover not only reminds us of dance's necessity in our Western culture but also, its abundant historical context. Still, the evolution in the character is worth mentioning: Mike Lane has graduated from enthusiastic creative participation to being a person who is actually in charge of their own destiny.

There’s a caveat, though. Mike has insisted – to Max, and to anyone else who will listen – that he’ll do whatever it takes to bring the Rattigan show to life, but he will not, under any circumstances, dance. In that sense, Mike is like the stripper version of a Clint Eastwood gunfighter, being lured out of self-imposed exile for one last, glorious hurrah. There’s also the matter that, in spite of their “no-strings-attached” personal arrangement, Max and Mike seem to have genuinely fallen for one another by the time the movie has wound its way toward its final frames. This means that the big, splashy show that serves as Magic Mike’s Last Dance’s proper ending also doubles as a kind of poignant, unabashedly sentimental meta confession for two smart, driven, and passionate people who just happened to find each other at precisely the right time in their life.

How Does 'Magic Mike's Last Dance' End?

Salma Hayek and Channing Tatum as Maxandra and Mike about to kiss in Magic Mike's Last Dance
Image Via Warner Bros.

Much of Magic Mike’s Last Dance is a fairly straightforward love story, so it’s not surprising to see major plot beats re-imagined as dance numbers in the movie’s final stretch. What’s beautiful about the gesture, on the whole, is that Soderbergh seems to understand that cinema itself can serve to encapsulate those ineffable sensations like love, lust, and carnal and spiritual connection – sensations that, so much of the time, are difficult to articulate in words. Particularly for characters like Max and Mike, who aren’t exactly the kinds of neurotic chatterboxes you might find in, say, a Noah Baumbach film. Case in point: these are the kind of abstract, but cutting sentiments moving images were made to express.

In the end, in spite of scowling, humorless bureaucrats trying to shut the showdown in addition to interference from Max’s spiteful and philandering husband, Mike and Max’s show goes off without a hitch. There is applause, fanfare, and routines old and new. The movie’s climax is a shrewd crystallization of some of the core, elemental pleasures of moviegoing as they’ve been defined since the earliest days of the medium. The Magic Mike movies understand that we go to the movies to see stars sing, dance, fall in love, and figure the big stuff out before the end credits roll. Magic Mike’s Last Dance is not averse to maneuvering in a left-of-center fashion – it’s the kind of zigzagging, quintessentially Soderberghian experiment that seems constructed to defy expectations, much in the vein of the recently-reappraised Ocean’s Twelve. But the guy's also too much of a consummate showman to not provide us with the spectacle we so clearly came to this particular movie for.

Will There Be Another Magic Mike Movie?

Salma Hayek and Channing Tatum dancing in Magic Mike's Last Dance
Image Via Warner Bros.

Ultimately, the question of whether or not this really is Mike Lane’s last shot at air-humping to the raucous sounds of Ginwuine’s R&B smash “Pony” is one the Last Dance itself leaves intriguingly up in the air. On one hand, the ending we have here feels conclusive. If the series were to end here, it would be nothing if not a satisfying and thoughtful way of wrapping things up. However, there is also the suggestion on Soderbergh's part that there is more to come, more stories to tell, and that Mike Lane will never stop attempting to make as many underappreciated women feel as happy and as loved as possible, because, at the end of the day, that’s all he knows. Mike and Max profess their love for each other, the venue is saved, the dancers put on a good show, and the credits roll right before a rowdy bit of dance where dollar bills are seen raining from the sky. If there is a more downright fitting ending to a film released in 2023, we have yet to see it.

Magic Mike's Last Dance is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

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