Film review: Channing Tatum is as ripped and charming as ever in Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Magic Mike: The Last Dance

“Show, don’t tell,” is good advice for all aspiring writers, and there’s no doubt that Channing Tatum put on quite a show as the dance-stripper Mike Lane in Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike XXL (2015). In Magic Mike’s Last Dance (16s), however, Mike steps away from the stage, lured to London by Miami socialite Max Mendoza (Salma Hayek) to direct an erotic production at The Rattigan, a famous old theatre owned by her cheating husband’s family.

Written by Reid Carolin and directed by Steven Soderbergh, Last Dance is a celebration of the female gaze: Mike might be choreographing a reboot of the stuffy Victorian-era play Isabela Ascendant, but it’s Max, as the producer, who is pulling the strings. Here, though, is where the story gets a little bogged down, and especially when Max starts working out her personal drama with her ex-husband through the rejigged narrative of the play — while the movie opens with a bang when Max commissions Mike to give her a private lap-dance, and finishes (not a spoiler) with Olympic-standard raunch, the extended middle section is devoted to explaining what women want, and why, rather than simply cranking up the music and letting the company of fine dancers do their very impressive thing.