Magic Mike’s Last Dance (NC16)

112 minutes, opens on Thursday

3 stars

The story: Channing Tatum’s abs return for the third and final Magic Mike comedy-drama which sees former stripper Mike Lane (Tatum) in Florida, left bankrupt by a failed business. A socialite (Salma Hayek Pinault) lures him away to London with an offer he cannot resist.

Magic Mike (2012) was a sleeper hit based on Tatum’s experiences as a teen stripper. Ten years and a Magic Mike XXL (2015) sequel later, franchise creator Steven Soderbergh is ending the trilogy by replacing Mike’s ageing Kings of Tampa sidekicks with a female co-star, and Hayek Pinault is a fireball in Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

She plays bored, mercurial and wealthy Maxandra Mendoza, who is inspired by an ecstatic private lap dance session with Mike – such are the perks of the rich – to revive her stuffy West End theatre as a male striptease burlesque. Mike is designated the artistic director, and she, the producer.

With just a week until the opening, she installs a fish-out-of-water Mike in her grand Hyde Park home as they wrangle a troupe. A crabby butler (Ayub Khan Din), her precocious teen daughter (Jemelia George) and the husband (Gavin Spokes) she wants to spite are the others in residence.

This threequel with its numerous audition montages is a rambling, barely scripted lark no one seems to take seriously, least of all Soderbergh, who is back cheerfully directing with his original writers and choreographers.

They are a team of men making good-natured entertainment for the delectation of women. Shirtless beefcakes – the largest ensemble in the series, with a special “water dance” appearance from Mike – will again thrust and gyrate outrageously on stage while Maxandra has the time of her life, finding romance with an endearingly lovestruck Mike.

Hot take: Salma Hayek Pinault is the luckiest lady alive.

What’s Love Got To Do With It? (PG13)

109 minutes, opens on Thursday

3 stars

The story: How does one find lasting love in today’s world? Lily James plays Zoe, a film-maker. Having had lousy luck with dating apps, she documents the arranged marriage of her Pakistani neighbour Kaz (Shazad Latif) to explore the merits of his conservative approach.

The peppy confection What’s Love Got To Do With It? is a knowing throwback to the Brit romcom hits of the noughties. Love Contractually is a title proposed for Zoe’s documentary, and Emma Thompson from the actual Love Actually (2003) classic shows up as Zoe’s wiggy mum.

At the same time, Indian director Shekhar Kapur – this is his first feature since 2007’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age – has nicely updated the genre playbook to reflect a contemporary multicultural London, where 30something childhood friends Zoe and Kaz grew up in adjoining suburban townhouses.

Hindi cinema doyenne Shabana Azmi appears opposite Jeff Mirza as Kaz’s Pakistani immigrant parents. She is worldly wisdom, counselling that it is better to “fall into like and then walk into love”.

For handsome eligible doctor Kaz, this journey leads to a Muslim matchmaker (Asim Chaudhry), a week of Skype meetings with the selected bride (Sajal Ali) from Lahore, Pakistan, and finally a Bollywood-style wedding pageant in the South Asian continent. Trailing him with camera in tow is Zoe, who will discover truths about herself.

Jemima Goldsmith’s screenplay, which was inspired by her past cross-cultural marriage to former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan, is non-judgmental. Indeed, what’s love got to do with East versus West or tradition versus progress when the chemistry between the attractive leads James and Latif is so swoony?

Hot take: Something old, something new, something borrowed. This likeable Anglo-Asian romance is a merry match of the fresh and the familiar.