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.

The words Magic Mike may conjure up images of sweaty, sculpted, undulating men, dancing unthreateningly for hoards of screaming women, but there has always ...

“Magic Mike” and “XXL” (directed by Gregory Jacobs) both latched on to a kind of pure joy in the spectacle of the male stripper. release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “sexual material and language.” Running time: 112 minutes. It’s a clever conceit for a filmmaker who never tires of singeing the establishment he continues work in. After an acrobatic, but fully clothed, encounter with Mike, she decides to whisk him away to London, dress him up and put him in charge of staging a show that promises to make its audiences feel the way she did the night she met Mike. It’s also part fantasy, part bleak reality, part commentary the fundamental value of dance and what’s lost in a society that has forgotten how. Asking why sequels exist doesn’t usually produce satisfying answers, but “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” is a film that was born backwards, a fit of inspiration from Steven Soderbergh after seeing what Tatum had done with Magic Mike Live.

The Magic Mike's Last Dance star said that rehearsals for the sensual movie weren't as steamy off-screen as they were on during an appearance on the Garaham ...

Julianne spoke on her new psychological thriller Sharper, saying: 'It was so much fun to shoot and is surprising. Going back into a studio after the operation was a discovery and I was re-learning voice. Tough: Talking with host Graham about the new film's dance moves, Salma explained: 'It is very balletic and very sexy. Talking with host Graham about the new film's dance moves, Salma explained: 'It is very balletic and very sexy. I’m not going back to Africa any time soon!' The show will be a Lizzo sampler platter.'

The actor was rehearsing a tricky dance move with her co-star Channing Tatum when disaster almost struck.

[initially been reluctant to return to the franchise](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/channing-tatum-magic-mikes-last-dance_uk_62120e37e4b06212585e78d5), due to the intense workout and diet regimen required for the role. Talking about the movie’s choreography, Salma told Graham: “It is very balletic and very sexy. [but left the project for personal reasons](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/thandiwe-newton-magic-mike-channing-tatum_uk_6257e340e4b0723f8015a47a). [Salma Hayek](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/salma-hayek/) has revealed she almost exposed her co-star [Channing Tatum](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/channing-tatum/) to a rather unfortunate wardrobe malfunction during rehearsals for the new [Magic Mike](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/magic-mike/) film. [Graham Norton Show](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/the-graham-norton-show/), Salma said she was “hanging on for dear life” when she ended up falling upside down. Then I couldn’t remember if I was wearing underwear, so I was hanging on for dear life!”

Several new actors join Channing Tatum in Magic Mike's Last Dance, and who Salma Hayek plays in Magic Mike 3 is among the most important.

So, who Salma Hayek plays in Magic Mike 3 is more so her replacing Newton, not Amber Heard. It puts Salma Hayek in the position of being the film's main female lead, following Cody Horn's Brooke from Magic Mike and Amber Heard's Zoe from Magic Mike XXL. Salma Hayek replaced Thandiwe Newton after the Westworld star left the production to deal with a private family matter. Maxandra has a teenage daughter named Zadie and plays the part of Mike's love interest in Magic Mike's Last Dance. While Magic Mike 3 does reunite Tatum's dancer with director Steven Soderbergh and a few of his older friends, the film continues the franchise's trend of giving Mike a new love interest. The third entry in the franchise brings Mike Lane back into action years after he performed the show of his life in Magic Mike XXL.

Actress Salma Hayek has described a near miss with Magic Mike co-star Channing Tatum while rehearsing a “precise” dance move which went wrong on the set of ...

In 2017, the franchise produced the successful stage show Magic Mike Live, which was created and co-directed by Tatum. The first Magic Mike film followed 19-year-old Adam, played by Alex Pettyfer, as he entered the world of male stripping, guided by Tatum’s character, who had been in the business for six years. Speaking about performing the dance moves on set, Hayek told Graham Norton on his BBC chat show: “It is very balletic and very sexy.

This “empowering” franchise about male strippers peddles an offensive, patronising narrative about women and sexuality.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance begins, like the others before it, with a limp and generic nod to the fallout of the American dream. The film implies women over a certain age can only hope to find excitement in their lives by bagging a younger man – or paying to watch one undress. It’s not about looking at the man you can’t have; it’s about being looked at by the man you can. Magic Mike’s Last Dance has at least some humour, and it’s fun to watch such ambitious dance scenes. Mike suggests the boys remind her of who she was before she became a miserable bureaucrat; strippers load onto her commuting bus and perform a private striptease for her. The first two instalments of this comedy drama series concerning a group of male strippers in Tampa, Florida – Magic Mike (2012) and Magic Mike XXL (2015) – have grossed around $300m. Come on.) Yes, realistic strippers that look and act unwell might be a lot to ask of a fun blockbuster film – but then we might withhold the panegyrics about Soderbergh’s supreme realism. The film franchise has also spawned a titillating dance show in London, Magic Mike Live – there are ten shows a week in 2023, and tickets sell for upwards of £50. South Florida, years into the opioid epidemic, and he’s addicted to ecstasy? The paper-thin plots of these films are – of course – an excuse for athletic striptease sequences. But still, I find the protestations of director Steven Soderbergh’s genius to be a little absurd. Admittedly, Magic Mike might really be on the intellectual side of the current cinema landscape: a recent multiplex visit reminds me that this spring’s big releases include Dungeons and Dragons with Hugh Grant and Super Mario with Anya Taylor-Joy.

Salma Hayek has spoken candidly about a nightmarish moment on the Magic Mike set that nearly revealed all!

[ wowing fans with her incredible looks](https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/celebrity-style/20230208163911/salma-hayek-goddess-ab-bearing-crop-top/) for the press tour for the raunchy new movie, and dazzled while on the Graham Norton chat show in a chic black wrap dress while wearing sky-high golden platform heels - and we loved her look! [Salma Hayek ](https://www.hellomagazine.com/tags/salma-hayek/)confessed that she almost had a seriously embarrassing moment on the set of Magic Mike’s Last Dance - and that Channing Tatum needed to rescue her! ](https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/celebrity-style/20230208163911/salma-hayek-goddess-ab-bearing-crop-top/)I was terrified about trying to make it look easy, but it really needs strength in the body, which I do not have because I don’t work out.