Magic Mike's Last Dance — 1.5/5
The first ten minutes and I'm like yes, fuck yes, it's back, this stupid wonderful thing that I somehow love. And then it squanders every bit of goodwill that first ten minutes builds. For as much as these movies have been built for (and I can only guess here) the female gaze—sexy guys with sexy abs having sex via the feminine quality of dancing—the movies' most attractive parts have always been the friendships. Magic Mike's magical magnetic quality was always his ability not to make women fall in love with him, but to attract a group of likeminded people into his world—specifically, bringing men into his world. My friends—it's always been about da boyz. And here, da boyz have been stripped back to pure dance machines, names barely registered, no personality to speak of—not even dance styles altogether distinct from one another. They are, finally, just pieces of meat; a parody of the world that's been built in the past two movies. Instead, it's all built around the male-female relationship, which have always been part of the Magic Mike universe, but never the center. Just the asteroids coming in and out of his life. Here, it's built up like it's the sun, all passion, all fire—but the heat never reaches you. The two never really connect except in that first scene. Everything else that happens just looks distant and cold from all the way out here.
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