Mike Lane used to seem more like a person. Back in 2012, Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike introduced Channing Tatum's character as a genial hustler who knows the perils of staying too long at the party-a raucous Sunshine State answer to the New York escort played by Sasha Grey in an earlier, more aloof Soderbergh movie, 2009's The Girlfriend Experience. Both films are about the complexities of the business of intimacy (or at least the illusion of it) and hum with fiscal anxiety: Grey's character struggles with the pressures of offering a high-end service during a downturn, while Mike tries to save enough money to start his own business and get out of dancing, an industry in which he sees no future. But when Magic Mike got a sequel in 2015-Magic Mike XXL, directed by Gregory Jacobs-that economic context got dumped, which turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the series. Mike was transformed from a guy with struggles and ambitions to a figure no one knew they needed: the magical himbo performing not for money but for the sheer gratification of making women shriek and smile. That's the Mike we meet again in Magic Mike's Last Dance.
This story is from the February 13 - 26, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the February 13 - 26, 2023 edition of New York magazine.
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