Critics Call “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” Too Woke

Channing Tatum can’t quit “Magic Mike.”

The franchise, named after Tatum’s buff main character, returns this weekend for one last strip. There’s something different about “Mike” this time, though, and it has nothing to do with the star’s workout regimen.

“Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” which finds director Steven Soderbergh returning to the series, sees Tatum’s character reconnecting with his first love – stripping for rowdy women. Tatum’s Mike teams up with a rich, estranged woman (Salma Hayek) to re-imagine a stage production with allegedly regressive gender themes.

That’s your first clue that this “Dance” This film is very woke and thoughtful. The focus is on consent and female empowerment, according to the film’s early reviews, not bulky men parading for the pleasure of women and gay men.

This shift seems like catnip for liberal film scribes who cheer on the wake revolution (Or have been until recently). That isn’t the case, apparently.

TheWrap.com spits “Last Dance” For its “faux girl power” spin.

This film tries desperately to be a spectacle, with a tired, fauxfeminist message. This is a lavish love story for an unromantic audience.

The site’s critic suggests the franchise drifts off course with the new saga.

This movie is trying to solve the problem of female empowerment. It’s like your political cousin turning Thanksgiving into a hunger strike. We all came to this movie with the exact opposite goal in our minds.

The Daily Beast gave the film one of its few raves and noted that the film even went as far as to call it the “The Daily Beast.” In the back seat, you will find the title character.

Despite its title, Tatum’s Mike plays second-fiddle to Hayek’s Max, an imposing if wounded older woman whose craving for release and rejuvenation (not to mention revenge) is echoed by the old-turned-new show she produces with Mike…

Indiewire offered “Last Dance” A “B” While Mocking its feminist trappings.

Carolin’s script falls short around this laughable excuse for a feminist aesthetic, in which rich women are empowered by keeping their husbands’ money. Against this backdrop, the movie’s obsession with men “getting permission” Before touching a woman rings even hollower, like a lesson in consent.

Rolling Stone also reviews this movie Patronizing the audience.

Tame is what Magic Mike’s Last Dance is — what it apparently wants to be, what it becomes in exchange for its new, cardboard-simple, ostensible pro-woman worldview. The movie’s pleasures mute themselves beneath its good intentions.

The film’s screenplay seems loaded with According to Polygon, woke whoppers are.

“It’s about women. I’m not a woman.” That statement is typical of Magic Mike’s Last Dance And its ideas about what women want: When we finally get to the stage show itself, emcee Hannah (Juliette Motamed) shouts out both “a bad boy who always responds to my texts” and “a CEO who pays women more than men.”

Variety also finds little to like about the film. Similar themes are wan empowerment.

‘A woman can have whatever she wants whenever she wants.’ Unless of course that woman is watching Magic Mike’s Last Dance, in which case, she can only count on getting a fraction of what she wants, wrapped in platitudes about empowerment and consent.

Box Office Pro predicts “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” Original For an HBO Max release, this money has been earmarkedIt will bring in between $20-30 million to its first weekend. That will be impressive given the current state of movie attendance and the franchise’s diminishing returns.

The original score was based on the 2012 version $39 Million in its initial frame, while the 2015 sequel “Magic Mike XXL” Just $12.8 Million was raised.