Magic Mike’s Last Dance film review — male stripper franchise’s unwanted encore

Like an applause-thirsty band coming back onstage just when everyone has got their coats on, Magic Mike has returned for one more encore. The core team behind the male stripper franchise is present for Magic Mike’s Last Dance: star Channing Tatum, screenwriter Reid Carolin and director Steven Soderbergh. It would be rude not to stay and watch, especially since the whole shtick was entertaining in the early days.

But all that crotch-thrusting in women’s faces is starting to look a little desperate, sad and possibly problematic, given present-day gender politics. After all, even though the story deploys Salma Hayek’s amateur impresario as the female fig leaf who hires Tatum’s Mike, on another level it’s all about men asserting that they know what straight women really want. And apparently that’s lots of dry-humping and package-waving presented as a dance show.

As fans of the original Magic Mike (2012) and its sequel Magic Mike XXL (2015) will know, the concept is built around Mike being a himbo who dreams of being a furniture designer. But in the new film his business has gone bust, leaving him to bartend at parties. At one such function he meets Hayek’s Maxandra, a soon-to-be-divorced woman of means who solicits a lap dance from him. After they end up in bed, she insists that he come with her to London — not for sex but to direct a strip show at the theatre owned by her husband.

This turns out to be more or less Magic Mike Live, which has been playing at the actual Hippodrome in London’s West End since 2018. This involves not firefighters or cops with tearaway uniforms, like in the old days, but new-school fantasy figures such as “a CEO who pays women as much as men”. And still lots of crotch-thrusting, because that’s what women still really want. Actually, no, what we want is for you to know how to quit while you’re ahead and get off the stage with grace.

★★☆☆☆

In UK cinemas from February 10