We don't really get to know the dancers as characters, and I missed the raunchy male camaraderie of Mike's old stripper buddies, played by actors like Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello, who appear in just one brief scene. The dancing and the stripping feel tamer this time around. Soderbergh has always liked to subvert expectations, and here he seems bent on short-circuiting a lot of the pleasures we've come to expect from the Magic Mike movies. Still, there's something a little too dutiful and even dull about the way the characters' mutual attraction ultimately plays out. Their characters' creative back-and-forth becomes a vision of gender parity in action: Max wants to thrill her play's female audience, but she needs Mike's smarts and expertise to do it. Don't get me wrong: Tatum and Hayek Pinault have an on-screen chemistry that's both romantic and collaborative. I guess that makes Magic Mike's Last Dance the more mature, thoughtful entertainment, and I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing. The possibility of long-term romance didn't really factor into the first two Magic Mike movies, which were all about fleeting transactional encounters.