Magic Mike’s Last Dance review – Soderbergh’s reunion with Channing Tatum underwhelms

After creating the world of Magic Mike with Channing Tatum back in 2012, but stepping aside as director for the fondly-thought-of 2015 sequel XXL, Steven Soderbergh has returned for one final dance in this now iconic male stripper-verse with Magic Mike’s Last Dance. Sadly, though, Mike’s story goes out with less a bang than a nonplussed shrug, the joys of some great dance sequences outweighed by the far too loose and dull story around them.

It’s a particular shame because the story here, on its face, has great potential, especially in Soderbergh’s tricksy hands. It finds Mike (Tatum) down on his luck after a failed business venture, working as events staff in Miami where a chance encounter with rich and eccentric theatre producer Maxandra (Salma Hayek) eventually lands him in London, where Max wants him to direct an all-time great strip show.

Essentially, it’s a movie based on a spinoff of itself – the Magic Mike Live stage show – a fun multi-medium entertainment ouroboros the likes of which we haven’t really seen since Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game. It’s shocking, then, just how uninteresting this plot ends up being, Reid Carolin’s script lurching between all the inevitable hurdles Mike and Max face before they can put the show on. These are all deeply predictable and put together in such a lumpen way that Last Dance ends up as actually mostly quite boring, pretty much the worst thing a Magic Mike film – built, as they are, as big Friday night blowouts – could be.

Tatum, of course, is still incredibly charming in the title role – he’s practically incapable of being uninteresting on screen – and Hayek is having fun but the cast around them are dull and nondescript. We spend a weirdly long amount of time with them, too, the dancing fading into the background in favour of uninteresting divorce dramas and dinners with bland rich people. It makes sense as a way of putting us into Mike’s headspace as he navigates this alien world – and Soderbergh does give us some really great close-ups to drive the point home further – but the result is a rapidly waning interest level.

Things do liven up during the rehearsal process, but Last Dance only truly shines in its three centrepiece dance numbers – the scorchingly sexy opening, the extravagant showcase that closes things out, and a more lighthearted public dance in the middle that plays a bit like a part of an Ocean’s heist. These are all great, hitting all the beats that make Magic Mike a fun time at the movies and reminding us, yet again, that no other working actor can quite do what Channing Tatum does.

Yet, the highs the scenes leave you on fade fast whenever you have to remember the plot again, the comedown especially harsh in the moments we’re treated to a simply awful narration device that keeps spelling out the social and evolutionary history of dance with no verve or feeling. After the sleek, thrilling efficiency of Kimi last year, the idea of *that* Soderbergh – all rapid movements and lean storytelling – returning to the Magic Mike fold was a rather exciting one, but this Last Dance leaves a mostly mundane legacy.

Magic Mike's Last Dance is released in UK cinemas on February 10.