Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Warner Bros
It’s been 11 years since Channing Tatum first bared it all in Magic Mike, and yet Magic Mike’s Last Dance proves that he still has a trick or two up his G-string.
Director Steven Soderbergh’s latest is a threequel that’s simultaneously a continuation of its predecessors and, in terms of setting, story and tone, a bold departure that caps one of cinema’s most uniquely steamy trilogies. Delivering the male-entertainment goods while radiating a newfound degree of tender romanticism, it’s a fairy-tale coda that’s at once sensual, lyrical, and liberating.
Behind the camera once again after ceding directorial duties to Gregory Jacobs for 2015’s Magic Mike XXL, Soderbergh reconfirms his chameleon-like artistic sensibilities with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, which eschews both the straightforward subculture-immersed amour of the series’ maiden installment and the rowdy road-trip ebullience of its sequel.