It’s hard to tell if there was any hype for a third Magic Mike movie but the only reason why this film has anything of note is due to the behind-the-scenes drama that took place right at the beginning of filming.
Thandiwe Newton was initially cast in the lead role along with Channing Tatum, However, a heated fight between the two about the 2022 Academy Awards incident between Chris Rock and Will Smith led to Newton leaving the project or being fired depending on who you talk to.
While Newton’s team tries to deny the backlash that caused her to leave the film, the Magic Mike team was forced to go to Plan B which turned out to be a better option than what they were going with. Salma Hayek joined the cast to replace Newton and in many ways has much better chemistry with Tatum.
However, her change was so late in the game that the film had no time to update the script and change locations that were already greenlit before Newton left the project.
We got a film that made the most of the absolute mess behind the camera it was forced to clean up halfway through production.
In the film, Former male stripper Mike Lane (Tatum), who has since lost his furniture business during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now living in Miami and working as a bartender for a catering company. At a fundraising event hosted by Maxandra “Max” Mendoza (Hayek) After the event, Max asks Mike to speak with her privately.
Max asks how much he charges for a lap dance but Mike says he’s retired. Max agrees, but during the dance, she and Mike give in to passion and sleep together. Max flies Mike out to London and sells him on the idea of producing an X-rated version of her married family play as a revenge plot against her ex-husband.
There are a lot of logic gaps within the story that you have to buy into in order to enjoy this film. The story is over complicated for a very specific reason, Salma Hayek was not the first choice to play the role of Max. The film wears its feminist cap as this film is all about female fantasy. A 50-year-old divorce mother finds a younger physically attractive man to have sex with then gets him to ride a play that’s all about her.
The 2022 film ‘Wifelike‘ which was in theory the male fantasy about female sex robots. This film is the female version of a male sex robot. The difference is that this film doesn’t try to shame the women for having their own fantasies.
If you don’t like this film, you’re not in the target demographic which is middle-aged women who lust for younger men. Perhaps the series appealed to the 30-year-olds when it first began 10 years ago but those women aren’t 30 anymore.
‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ is a film that didn’t need to exist, to begin with, and the production team had an even bigger headache trying to get this thing completed once the ball got rolling.
If you are all in on the Magic Mike franchise, you’ll end up enjoying this about the same, if not Magic Mike’s Last Dance is the film that you can skip in its entirety without any guilt.
2/5
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