Review: Audiences deserve better than 'Magic Mike's Last Dance'

Sometimes you really can't go home again. Case in point, "Magic Mike's Last Dance," only in theaters. It's the second and last sequel (insert sigh of relief here) to Channing Tatum's 2012 smasheroo about a male stripper. That movie managed to be both raunchy and real-world relevant. Those were the days.

Before Hollywood called, Tatum, 42, spent his time stripping in Florida, learning moves that inspired his hit movie turn in "Step Up" and motivated "Magic Mike," directed by Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh, and its 2015 sequel, "Magic Mike XXL," directed by Gregory Jacobs.

Soderbergh returns to call the shots on "Last Dance," and his iconic cool is welcome, along with Tatum's glistening body beautiful. But where did the fun go? The new focus on female empowerment is admirable, but gender politics are no substitute for naked, guiltless bliss.

Returning screenwriter Reid Carolin picks up with Tatum's Mike Lane at a professional and personal low point. The pandemic has wrecked his custom furniture business. Mike is now tending bar in a Miami dive, where his prospects are far from sunny.

Enter Maxandra Mendoza (great name), a wealthy socialite played with flair to spare by Salma Hayek Pinault. Her proposition? Hire Mike for a private lap dance. He asks for $60,000, she offers $6,000. He has debts so he takes it. And in their teasing, erotic, bantering scenes together, the two stars ignite sparks that are quickly doused when she goes platonic.

Bummer. The plot switches gears when the magic-deficient Mike is called to duty by this rich older woman who's divorcing her cheating husband (Alan Cox) and looking for payback. How? She'll give Mike the $60,000 if he follows her to London to help stage a hot, one-night-only male dance revue in the stuffy legit theater she's inherited from the hubby she wants to shock.

Will the revue resemble the rowdy hijinks from previous "Mike" sizzlers? You wish. Mike's buddies in the skin trade -- Ken (Matt Bomer), Tito (Adam Rodriguez), Tarzan (Kevin Nash) and Richie (Joe Manganiello) -- are reduced to a Zoom call. And the priceless Matthew McConaughey as club owner Dallas is MIA.

The film features running commentary from Max's teenage daughter Zadie (Jemelia George) who tells us what dance means in modern society and how it relates to the relationship between Mike and her mom. It doesn't. Not really.

Instead, we get a star search on the London streets and new routines -- choreographed by Alison Faulk and Luke Broadlick -- that play like outtakes from "So You Think You Can Dance." Until his "last dance," Mike is relegated to a backstage role in the new production. That's even worse than putting Baby in a corner in "Dirty Dancing."

What laughs there are come from Ayub Khan-Din as Max's frisky valet Victor and Vicki Pepperdine as a Brit censor who drops her objections to a strip show when the guys drop their pants on the top deck of a London bus. More scenes like that one might have helped.

This is no knock on Tatum who still has all the moves as a dancer. He's also an underrated actor. Check him out in "Foxcatcher," "Stop-Loss" and "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints." Tatum deserved better than this pale, generic follow-up. So did Mike. And so do audiences.

It's a raw deal substituting the sweaty, sexy and, OK, vulgar energy of the first two films with a lecture on morality. Sure, a woman's pleasure is a crucial element in what Mike and company are selling. But the joy these dudes took in pleasing them has been defanged until nothing is left but a fading memory of the wow that was.