Magic Mike

Channing Tatum as Mike Lane and Kylie Shea facing each other on stage with rain pouring. At the climax of “Magic Mike's Last Dance,” Channing Tatum performs a ...

The film ends with nearly thirty minutes of dance numbers, including a ten-man version of Tatum’s famous routine to Ginuwine’s “Pony,” a Busby Berkeley-esque sequence in which muscled performers spill down a double staircase in waves, and a silky contemporary-dance solo. During the “Step Up” press tour, Tatum told interviewers, “I never did any kind of class whatsoever.” In “Last Dance,” he moves like a souped-up car: sleek, low to the ground, capable of great speed. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.” His way of moving was grounded and explosive; Fred Astaire’s was elevated, aristocratic, and cool. The choreography, filmed in closeup, makes a case that the most charged and intimate view of an American male is a pair of aging knees in dancer’s knee pads, accompanied by large, slightly hairy thighs and unglamorous feet. At the climax, Tatum performs a complex, erotic duet in about six inches of water with the American ballerina Kylie Shea. “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” which was inspired by the making of the stage show, finds Mike washed up again, working as a cater waiter who occasionally gets recognized by women from his past. “I just kind of make it look like I do.” In “Magic Mike XXL,” a frothy tale of a road trip to a stripping convention, the members of the Xquisite Male Revue are given more elaborate backstories, and even more stage time; instead of muscle spasms and crooked string lights, we get classic movie-musical numbers. Or, in “Magic Mike,” when he lets his top hat fall and skitter down the runway as he worms across the floor. It’s what happens in “Singin’ in the Rain” when Gene Kelly hops backward over a bar in unison with Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor, and the heel of his shoe—or maybe part of his pants, we can’t quite see—catches the edge of some fringe on a stool and makes it swing. The men are dealing with an alien yet positive force—“a zombie apocalypse of repressed desire,” as Mike puts it. Although you cheer when he quits the show at the end of the first film, and at the end of the second, you don’t really blame him for coming back.

Forget getting ahead in America. The stripper at the heart of the film trilogy is working frantically not to lose his shirt.

But it’s also the creators’ version of a conclusion to Mike’s journey that offers him a respite from the troubles that plague a working-class striver like him. The independence that he had as a small-business owner is gone, and he is now forced to respond as stuck-up lackeys bark orders at him. At a party he is helping cater, he is recognized by a woman named Kim (Caitlin Gerard), who turns out to be a screaming college student he danced for in the first movie. The deeper concerns of “Magic Mike” shouldn’t have been a surprise. The purportedly final movie of the saga opens with a British-accented voice-over that treats Mike as an anthropological subject to be explored. In those initial minutes the audience is made to feel his exhaustion as he returns to the kind of odd jobs he thought he had left behind. Still, her dialogue speaks to that underlying interest that has always been a part of this franchise: Mike is representative of an Everyman’s struggle to stay afloat. The “Magic Mike” movies are about impeccable abs, female pleasure, male friendship and the power of a great lap dance. His passion for the latter draws him back to his pals from the Xquisite club, who are planning a road trip to Myrtle Beach for a male stripper convention as one final hurrah before they leave the life behind. The movie, set in Tampa, Fla., drew audiences looking for “ [hot boys,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/movies/magic-mike-with-channing-tatum-draws-gay-men.html) but the story within was more melancholy than the squeal-inducing imagery of ripped dudes in goofy, barely there costumes suggested. “Magic Mike” has always been about money, and not just the dollar bills that are slipped into G-strings. With “Last Dance,” opening Friday, Tatum, the director Steven Soderbergh, the writer Reid Carolin and their collaborators have created a trilogy that’s sneakily about the last decade or so in American instability.

The third and final Magic Mike movie isn't nearly as sexy or entertaining as its predecessors. Mike (Channing Tatum) is now bartending and is seduced by a ...

Soderbergh has always liked to subvert expectations, and here he seems bent on short-circuiting a lot of the pleasures we've come to expect from the Magic Mike movies. The play is a dreary-looking period drama called Isabel Ascendant, and Max thinks it needs a massive contemporary overhaul, with more heat and more urgency — and, yes, an ensemble of male strippers. Max, impressed by the passion and artistry of Mike's dancing, asks him to come back to London with her. Mike gives her what she asks for, starting with a lap dance and building to what looks like an elaborate home-gymnastics routine. Three years later, the director Gregory Jacobs leaned into the erotic spectacle of it all with the exuberant [Magic Mike XXL](https://www.npr.org/2015/07/03/418841406/pop-culture-happy-hour-no-250-magic-mike-xxl-and-catastrophe), placing women's desires front and center in a way that made even the first movie look staid. One evening, he finds himself mixing a drink for a wealthy London-based socialite named Maxandra Mendoza, played with a nice mix of vulnerability and steel by

'Magic Mike' changed his personal and professional life. Now the filmmaker is sending the stripper with abs of gold off into the sunset.

A lot of what's happening to Mike is a woman coming in and recognizing and valuing him for who he is, which is something that he hasn't felt before. And the second movie was kind of a shedding of that. I was writing the first movie right before I was turning 30, and Chan had turned 30.

Life of the Party Saturday, RTÉ2, 11pm Comedy starring Melissa McCarthy as Deanne, a middle-aged woman who decides to go back to college and finish her ...

With Steve Carell and Emma Stone. With Gabriel Byrne and Alex Wolff. Adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s bestseller starring Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson, a divorced alcoholic who’s on the train home from New York when she sees what looks like an attack on a woman in her home.

ALISON Hammond got tongue-tied as she flirted with shirtless Magic Mike stars on This Morning.The flushed presenter was excited after watching them pe.

Standing next to the boy who were sweaty and out of breath, Alison said: "Guys how good was that? [Channing](https://www.thesun.ie/who/channing-tatum/) was eyeing up the role of Sam Wheat, played by [Patrick Swayze](https://www.thesun.ie/tvandshowbiz/1340465/patrick-swayze-when-die-dirty-dancing/). "The thing is, what's hard is, you to ma..." [Demi Moore](https://www.thesun.ie/who/demi-moore/)) from his enemies. How often do you have to be in the gym?" "You guys are actually in the movie as well aren't you?