The Magic Mike, Coda: The Death of Michael Jeffrey Lane

What is the opposite of a sausage fest? A clam jam? A taco party? Whatever it is, there was one down at The Light Cinema when I caught the excellent Magic Mike's Last Dance. Only place you can see so many women normally is the Coco Lounge bar every Saturday when the hen dos are on. No-one with a penis walks through those doors and never has. The bouncers are extra tight, if they see you're packing, you are refused entry. 86'd out of there straight on to the tarmac. What goes down in there is anyone's guess. You'd have to be well connected in the 40 year old single women scene or have an older relative living the life. Otherwise I'd recommend waiting outside the doors when the animals are let loose on to the streets to catch a glimpse of them. Hordes of drunken middle aged women granted parole, ready to strike on unsuspecting males and going out in a blaze of glory. Your money or your life. And you better give them what they want.

Magic Mike 3's all women audience is somewhat baffling considering in the first 15 minutes Salma Hayek is being thrusted against giant glass windows. Nearly reaching the exaggerated levels of Showgirls when Kyle Maclachlan launches Elizabeth Berkley up against the fountain. Key emphasis on the nearly because no-one can reach that. Fair play to Sandman for allowing this Goddess Hayek to explore comedic paths in the past but it's great to see her back doing what she does best, being ferociously horny. Keep up or be left for dead. She slows for nobody. This is still the same actress who at the end of Desperado, chased Antonio Banderas across the highway with Tito & Tarantula's Back to the House blaring and demanded to be thanked for her services. Imagine that. The audacity. Stopping the sexiest voice in Hollywood and demanding he show you more gratitude. Who else could do that? No damsel in distress could resist him and tell him what's what. That bastards charms are hypnotising. Hayek is the only one to ever show signs of immunity. Honestly, those two throw it back and forth in that movie constantly. Could well be the sexiest action movie of all time?

Given my appreciation for that movie you can understand why it thrills me to see her being launched in to giant glass windows in such an over the top sexualised manner. As a male, I believe it is your civic duty to witness such an absurdly horny sequence as this from the Latino Queen on the big screen. However, as evidence has shown, I am clearly alone in this belief. Throw my sexuality in to question but I remain as ever a Magic Mike stan and if you think my man's going out on his last hurrah without me being there, you have another thing coming. Soon as the invitation was out, Mike's hanging up the boots after one last dance, I had to RSVP on that event immediately. Those who can't be there to support their boys final shindig can't be trusted. He calls, I answer. Mike's going out and you'd be a damn fool to miss it!

Me and my friend Michael Jeffrey Lane first met back in 2012. Over a decade since our journey first began. What struck me as great in that initial introduction is how well Steven Soderbergh balances the beefcake cheese requirement arising from focusing on male strippers whilst addressing genuine economic issues of 21st century living. Unfortunately, many dance movies are laughed off as pure silliness and some deservedly so. Those that deserve greater credit are the ones which have used the serious elements as a secret weapon amongst the feel good factor. Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance being perfect examples in depicting working class characters struggling with financial difficulties.

Going more local, The Full Monty is the pride of Sheffield. First time I watched that, I was in utter shock as a scene had been shot one street away from where I was living at the time. Never has that happened before and it is unlikely to ever occur again. Actually, that's not true, around the same time, I saw Shane Meadows's The Virtues, which had been shot over in Endcliffe Park pretty much outside the house I was living in. Another time, I put Kill List on after a night out and my head rolled off as I spotted clear as day in the background of a scene none other than Sheffield Train Station. She's a beauty.

Back to The Full Monty, like Flashdance it utilises the steel worker central character. Always referred to Sheffield as 'The City of Sex and Steel', so it makes sense that this would be the characters profession. Unmistakably that film embodies the full meaning of what we're talking about when we're talking about Sex and Steel. Steel factory workers turning to stripping on the side to earn extra cash. Oh yes. Definitely says something about the state of the economy when dudes gotta be turning to sleaze to pay their way in this town. Alternatively, Flashdance is set in Pittsburgh, which as it turns out is also a steel city. My knowledge of Pittsburgh is limited to the movies of George A. Romero and Tom Savini. In their eyes, the inhabitants are mindless consumers, racist lynch mobs and serial killers who think they're vampires. Therefore, Flashdance has always been very striking in its more realistic direction. I've often wondered what horror heads Romero and Savini made of Flashdance

Magic Mike inverts the structure of The Full Monty. It's protagonists full time job is stripping and he seeks to establish a respectable construction business. Like Jesus himself, Magic Mike is something of a carpenter. Take note though, his dream is not to be a worker but a business owner. Sadly, Mike is tied to the life with a greedy stripper boss in Matthew Mcconaughey. Easily Mcconaughey's best ever role this. In Wolf of Wall Street, he gives one of the finest cameos in the history of weird cameos. He didn't need long at all to establish an impression with his chest slamming and warrior like humming chants. Should come as no surprise that these are actually his own vocal warm up exercises done in between takes and Dicaprio was sent so white by these that he asked Scorsese to put them in the movie. We owe Steven Soderbergh for creating a role that Mcconaughey could bring that same energy and explode in.

Mcconaughey is so good in fact that he opens the first movie of the Magic Mike series with one of his irresistibly watchable stripper show introductions. Dressed head to toe in cowboy gear as he addresses his all middle aged female audience. Kicking things off this way is almost like mocking American history. It could have so easily have just began with an intertitle gag to set the scene reading, "In the 1800s cowboys moved out west and chased the American dream. Not much has changed"

Almost as though this is Soderbergh's take on the modern cowboy and what became of manifest destiny. Our heroes of the west didn't die, they're in stripper joints every night strutting their stuff to make ends meet! For those unaware, since location is often a big thing in these movies, Magic Mike is actually set in Tampa, Florida. Hence, why the stripping gang call themselves The Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa!

One for the trivia heads. Recently came across an absolutely hilarious piece of trivia that police once followed up a noise complaint to a house only to find a naked coked up Matthew Mcconaughey playing bongos. When they tried to arrest him, he resisted and fought the cops. What a legend. We salute you Mr Mcconaughey. He brings this vibe to his performance in Magic Mike. Every time I see that scene where he's coaching Alex Pettyfer (yes him, Stormbreaker himself, Number fucking Four) it has me in fits of laughter. Mcconaughey with his gym gear that's several sizes too small talking about making love to the mirror is trash cinema gold. He's so funny that that you might actually miss he's something of a self-interested villain in the movie, promising big dreams, delivering little and running off with the money. Last person you want to go in to business with.

Let's not forget Channing Tatum though who has shown some of his best acting in this role over the trilogy. An actor primarily known for his good looks and athletic abilities. Easy to see why when to a large extent this is deeply personal and serves as a quasi-biopic for him. It's well documented that he was a stripper in his youth and a lot of this is filled with his own experiences and contempt for the industry. Story goes that he gave up on that life because he thought modelling and stripping was too simple and that he needed a challenge so he took on acting too. Respect, chief. His contributions to Hail Caesar and The Hateful Eight are in this critic's opinion, underrated. His funniest moment ever coming in the former when he rides that boat over to the communist submarine. Pure cartoon brilliance. I'm sure no-one had it on the cards that Kanye West's antisemitic turn would be ended courtesy of a single screening of Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill's buddy cop comedy 21 Jump Street Reports are that Mel Gibson is lining himself up next in the queue to receive the cure for his inner Jewish loathing. Come get your medicine, Mel!

Whilst I remain disappointed that the first Magic Mike was not the twisted epic of Boogie Nights or Showgirls, you've got to respect the precision of the package. Soderbergh may turn to an accessible romantic comedy and pop entertainment but that doesn't mean he leaves room for slack. Hitchcockian meticulous devotion to craft whatever the job. Magic Mike is armed with superb writing, editing and cinematography. The fact it feels like both a little indie character study and popular mainstream film is a testament to its brilliance. Only problem that comes with this is you get idiots complaining about the colour grading. They seem clueless to the fact experimentation with colour is clearly intentional as an artistic choice with yellow for all the exterior Florida beaches and blue for the interior club sequences. If I hear any more people complaining about bad colour grading I will fucking end them with a 2 footed drop kick to the chest like Godzilla did Megalon back in '73.

Magic Mike features plenty of style and you sure as hell don't expect the drops of substance. Soderbergh may not be shooting this on an iPhone like Unsane but there's certainly a modern appeal. Allowing it to be compared favourably with Hustlers, which focuses on female strippers who target male Wall Street stockbrokers. Bringing us straight back to the Wolf of Wall Street strangely enough. This is where Hustlers actually tops Magic Mike. Nobody cares about Wall Street stockbrokers being the victims but having lonely middle aged women as the johns could be seen as problematic these days.

Who could have been prepared for the sequel Magic Mike XXL though? More Mike than you know what to do with! Our mighty sequel turns that problematic angle on its head and positions them as respectably, male entertainers. They're no longer the dodgy exploiters they seem in the first movie taking desperate people's money but now talented decent folk who share their gifts to the world. During a scene at a place I like to call 'Milf Mansion'. The Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa bring joy to the lives of these middle aged women who feel unseen. The sequel separates the wall of audience and performer in this rather wholesome sequence. You don't need a stage to do what's right! There's something almost meta about the casting of a now older Andie MacDowell, who previously worked with Soderbergh on Sex, Lies and Videotape.

This section is proof they do care about their audience/clientele and that it is unfair to say these guys are any different from musicians, who charge for their albums and shows. It's a living at the end of the day. Listen here, The Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa are genuine artists. Exactly what Magic Mike XXL teaches us. They sing. They dance. They paint. They build. As Dirk Diggler once said, "Everyone's blessed with one special thing". Here they are back for a tour across the country. Getting the band back together for one big show The Blues Brothers style. At the start of the second one, Mike is out the game and lost in his construction business, which may seem a cleaner, more respectable profession but deep inside he feels empty. As though society has told him this is a good job and stripping isn't so he's followed the consensus but in the process lost sense of who he is. Give Magic Mike his identity back! Yep, this is what his boys do. First, they play a joke on our Michael by saying they desperately need his help for one stripping gig otherwise they're going to go broke. It's a sad state of affairs, that if they'd have put it any other way, he wouldn't have come. When he does arrive, they reveal they were just messing and wanted to see him and invite him on tour with them.

So Mike's a little hesitant about returning to the old life but the series unofficial theme song 'Pony' changes all that when it begins pumping out on a radio. Like all great musical and dance movies, this forces him to groove, baby! Choosing to express himself through the art of dance. Don't knock it, Kevin Bacon once saved an entire town by dancing. Dancing as a means to emancipation. Gyrating 'til the shackles come loose. Michael Jeffrey Lane pulls some of the most outrageous moves you've ever seen. Wall runs, back flips, the lot. He goes all Prince of Persia in a rather small garage, leading some to call it the dance sequence of the decade. This could well be true but I would like to propose we throw in Craig Brewer's underrated Footloose remake. Nothing amuses me more in these types of movies when dudes just vent out their anger and frustration by engaging in sweaty dancing. Let off some steam, Bennett!

On my last revisit of Magic Mike XXL, I forced my boy Ricardo Carvalho and his girlfriend to endure this wonderful work of art with me. As it turned out that Pony sequence was a make or break and the key to the movie. Read a review that perfectly sums that song up a while back. Said something like, "you can almost always guarantee that somewhere, someone is grinding on someone else to pony". Following this sequence, Mrs Carvalho said, "right that's it, I'm going to bed!", and left the room faster than John Wick can take out an entire army of goons. On the other hand, Ricardo sat up straight and went, "na, I'm staying up me. I've got to see more of this Michael character". Magic Mike XXL, it makes or it breaks you. It does not apologise for what it is. Powerful, unadulterated, life changing art.

Mike's backwards cap wearing was a real talking point for Ricardo and I. A real taboo breaker in 2015. When Magic Mike asks about why Mcconaughey is no longer their leader, they mention he found he didn't need them anymore and fled Tampa with Pettyfer for riches elsewhere. A bastard 'til the end! Magic Mike XXL then allows them to break from his chains. Over the movie, they come aware that they all had skills, which stripping allowed them an excuse to practice, albeit a muted and toned down version. See, that's what confuses the guys. They don't want to strip and yet they keep getting drawn back to the life. Why? Because that gives a stage to practice some of the things they really want to do. An indirect thing. These guys don't want to be manual labourers as society tells them is honourable, they want to be artists!

If they are to succeed, Mike tells them they have to forget their former employer and boss, the mean and manipulative Mcconaughey. It's time to do away with the boring and cliched routines of firemen and cowboy costumes. Out the window this gear must go. For their last gig all together, they must look deep within and find their own interests to explore on stage. Injecting a slice of personality and maybe even come auteurs to achieve originality, truth and identity. Maybe even to make stripping the 10th art or whatever we're up to now. Everyone gets their moment, making this one of the most wholesome experiences a male viewer could ever have. A fantasy in which you and all your boys artistic endeavours come true. All supporting each other and thriving.

The character known as, 'Big Dick Richie', doesn't believe this is possible and that the art form can be transformed to such a high status. He requires further encouragement. In one of the funniest scenes Mike dares him to make the most miserable looking cashier smile. Big Dick Richie enters the shop and throws some insane moves whilst intentionally dropping Cheetos everywhere and sliding across the floor to Backstreet Boys's I Want It That Way playing over the speakers. As he engages in this act of madness, the rest of The Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa stand at the window cheering him on like school boys in the playground. Eventually, the cashier smiles and all self-doubt is removed. Stripping is becoming the 10th art. Big Dick Richie has the best scene at the end too where he enters in a full suit soundtracked by Bruno Mars and picks out a girl from the crowd, does a mock marriage, then gets all sleazy to Nine Inch Nails's Closer Strapping this girl in to a torture device, stripping to his boxers, swinging up and down on the metal bars and thrusting his genitals in to her grinning welcoming face. What a change of pace. Get yourself a man like Big Dick Richie who can switch it up and do both. At the click of a finger he reverts from Mr Romantic to The Sadistic Torturer. Sometimes a girl wants to be hugged and sometimes they want to be strangled. It is wise to be a man of all trades.

Out of nowhere, just for the fucking fun of it, Childish Gambino joins the gang and serves as their MC to introduce them all on the big night. Adding to the euphoria that Magic Mike XXL provides. Firmly, ties it closer to The Full Monty in the feeling that it achieves. I've seen many films in my time but rarely can I say I have experienced what these two movies provide. Believe the word I'm looking for would be healthy or positive masculinity.

Many support the abandoning of the hackneyed aspects of the first film such as the drug addiction, mentor and apprentice roles in favour of XXL's rebranding as an ensemble film. Males bonding together and achieving their dreams like this. That is the Magic of Mike. It’s the friends made on the way. With male suicide constantly on the rise, a film like Magic Mike XXL would do the world a whole load of good. We've seen how 21 Jump Street ended fascism, could Magic Mike XXL do the same for toxic masculinity? It's the cure that seldom know exists.

Tell your boys about Magic Mike XXL. We'll form a new society based on its foundations. Make male suicide a thing of the past. We don't need to do the sad thing any more. Rather appropriately this ends with DJ Khaled's All I Do Is Win and it's like Ocean's Eleven where they all meet up by the Bellagio fountains postheist, emerging successful and that classical song Claire De Lune is playing but here we have the trash version. In spite of its pop trash aesthetic, there have been critics singing the praises of Magic Mike XXL and declaring it a masterpiece. They could well be right.

Watching the opening of Magic Mike 3, you'd almost think they had the wrong title. We hear some teenage girl's shoddy narration and all I could think was come on guys, it's Magic Mike's Last Dance not Magic Mike's Last Chapter! No points off for this though because they shoot it correctly. Our jacked up protagonist is stood in a suit and sunnies with his back to us on a pier as though this is his superhero pose. The joke certainly lands. Given the clothes and location, you'd be under the impression Mike's thriving in his business endeavours. This is then spun on its head when it's revealed Mike is not the boss of this operation, he is merely collecting the catering goods. We get some shots of him in robot mode serving the guests at a party. This isn't living. This isn't Mike. What we have here is Johnny Drama's worst nightmare. Where dreams are diminished and you're nothing but a washed up waiter.

In a lovely nod to the original, a now older female guest recognises Mr Lane from when he came to her house, dressed as a cop and stripped for her friends. Since, the girl is with a new boyfriend and doesn't want to embarrass Mike or herself, she maintains that he was a real cop. The boyfriend wants to know more and asks how Mike dealt with the situation. Cooly playing along he tells him he, "let her off with a warning". Smooth as ever. There's a reason they once called him Magic Mike. Who is hosting this soiree? A rather rich and dissatisfied woman played by Salma Hayek. Well, once she hears that this guy used to be in the stripping game, she books him in for a private dance to close the night after the attendees have all departed. Adamant he's not going back to the life, Mike turns her down but he doesn't need too much convincing. This leads in to the previously mentioned window slamming action.

After Mike's thrown her in to just about every surface in the room like she's Oh Dae Su in Lee Woo-Jin's apartment, they proceed to intercourse. Salma Hayek takes a shine to Mikey Mike and proposes that he come to London with her to direct a play. So that's what we get here, Mike lost in the London theatre scene. Shitting all over it. Turning nerdy elite rubbish in to stripping. What a King. A master of mockery. He's here to do for theatre what Happy Gilmore did for golf. Meaning, he's here to do the Lord's work. Overseas in Albion, he begins to wonder whether he's out of his depth, why he was offered the job and if it's just Salma Hayek trying to get back at an ex who owns the theatre. As her daughter informs us, she never finishes anything. Can Mike do the impossible, navigate the London art scene and regain his heroic status from long ago as 'Magic Mike'?

To complete his mission, he must rub shoulder to shoulder with the wealthy big wigs. A man of humble origins lost in a world of high culture. The 21st century Oscar Wilde. We've done the cowboys and American west, now it’s the cutthroat world of the British bourgeois. Now, this is where I totally love the movie. An idiot like him having somehow found himself infiltrating these different classes and scenes. Rest assured, where ever there are milfs, that is where he shall be. Living out all our sugar mummy fantasies. Makes you feel good to know there's people like him out there in the world just turning up in all sorts of places and leaving nothing but admirers where ever he goes. A conqueror of any social situation. Knock him out, put him on a boat, sail to distant lands, drop him in the waters to float ashore, come back 6 months later and find him completely integrated in to whatever civilisation is present.

This mission being a side quest for our beloved hero, having left The Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa in the US of A for this brief trip. Those wanting to check in on the old gang will be pleased to know that they all make an appearance via a zoom call. They want to drop in on their boy virtually and offer words of wisdom from one stripper to another. Wouldn't be the same without them for at least a brief stop by!