Magic Mike’s Last Dance Parent Guide

Mike (Channing Tatum) was excited to get his furniture business off the ground but it just couldn’t survive the rigors of a global pandemic, and he’s back to taking odd jobs in Miami to make ends meet. His latest gig is bartender at a charity fundraiser run by Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek), who is currently in the midst of a messy divorce from her exceedingly wealthy husband, Roger (Alan Cox). She’s reliably informed by one of the guests that her bartender, unbeknownst to her, is an exceptional stripper and a lap dance from him might be what she needs to take her mind off things.

Mike’s performance does more than just give Max a mental break. She’s planning on making some major changes to a show at a theater she owns in London, and based on his performance, she decides that Max is just the man to direct it. Once Mike arrives in London, he finds himself trying to learn the ropes and develop a new show, while also managing his burgeoning feelings for his new boss…and hers for him.

Despite the title and premise, this is somehow not the most sexually suggestive movie I’ve ever seen. Sure, there are at least a dozen scenes of either provocative dancing or striptease, but there’s only one actual sexual encounter which happens off-screen and there’s no explicit nudity. (Honestly, I was more disturbed by the non-stop no-touch sexual choreography in Cats, which feels like what would happen if you wanted to make a movie about strippers on the Island of Doctor Moreau.) So this isn’t a real winner for family audiences (which you already knew), but it’s not outright pornographic, either. It’s just raunchy, and after you watch the trailer, that’s no surprise.

If you can look past the sea of oiled-up abs and pecs, there’s some reasonably difficult choreography going on. It’s not easy to do a standing backflip, or pick people up in chairs, let alone doing either while gyrating your hips so aggressively that you could probably give yourself whiplash. The performers in the film, much like actual strippers, have a hard job, and I’m inclined to give them some credit for putting on such a physically demanding performance.

The plot, as you might expect, is regurgitated nonsense and bears no scrutiny. Or, for that matter, any of your attention. It’s perfunctory at best. The point of Magic Mike’s Last Dance is to cram as many seductive dance numbers as possible into 112 minutes - and nothing else. The movie certainly doesn’t take itself seriously, so if you’re planning to sit down and watch it, you shouldn’t take it seriously either. That being said, I must confess that I haven’t seen the previous two installments of the franchise, so if I’m missing some essential backstory that somehow contextualizes the events of this film into something resembling catharsis, I’m sorry. I’m sure someone will correct me if that’s the case – but I’m not holding my breath.