![]() ![]() When the first “Magic Mike” arrived in 2012, the story was irresistible: With his movie career heading into overdrive, Tatum was starring in a film based on his own pre-Hollywood experiences as a dancer in a male revue. Even then, the specter of monetary worries still lingers. Now he gets a way out, and the kind of happy ending for which many long. Mike saw the one thing he worked for crumble. ![]() Sure, it’s a lot of rom-com escapism, but it also has real-world resonance. What started as a (mostly) realistic portrait of stripper life in the wake of the Great Recession has evolved into a fantasy for the days of Covid-related financial strife, in which Mike is rescued from his economic travails by a rich almost-divorcée (Salma Hayek Pinault) who sees his talent and whisks him away to London to direct a show. 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. “Magic Mike” has always been about money, and not just the dollar bills that are slipped into G-strings. But just beneath all the joy of gyrating hips lurks economic anxiety. The “Magic Mike” movies are about impeccable abs, female pleasure, male friendship and the power of a great lap dance. Now Mike is working for a catering service, serving drinks to wealthy people who donate to causes they don’t even care to learn about. The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed his custom furniture business, his raison d’être beyond stripping in the first two movies. ![]() The first thing you learn about Mike Lane, played by Channing Tatum and otherwise known as Magic Mike, in the new movie “ Magic Mike’s Last Dance” is that his dream has died. ![]()
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