Review: 'iMordecai' is a family story with its heart in the right place, but so much else going wrong

The story of “iMordecai” is based, loosely, on the family of its first-time director, Marvin Samel — and there’s enough authentic charm here that one wishes the rookie filmmaker had handed the project off to someone who could dodge the sentimental pitfalls that he plunges into head first.

This comedy-drama centers on Mordecai Samel, a retired plumber pushing 80 in a Miami apartment complex with his wife, Fela (Carol Kane — making for the “Taxi” reunion you never knew you wanted). Mordecai thinks he can still fix things like he used to, which is why his exasperated son Marvin (Sean Astin) finds him taking a jackhammer to his bathroom, to give Fela a walk-in shower.

Marvin also notices Mordecai’s ancient flip phone, held together with electrical tape, and decides it’s time for his dad to enter the iPhone age. Turns out that having a phone without buttons is liberating — once Mordecai gets some lessons from one of the “Einsteins” at the store (no mention of “Genius Bar” in this unlicensed movie), Nina (Azia Dinea Hale). Mordecai and Nina become fast friends, sharing a love of painting, and their cross-generational friendship opens up Mordecai to art and other pursuits.

Mordecai’s new life is not without its complications. Fela is starting to experience dementia, and Mordecai needs to watch over her more closely than before — particularly when Fela hears Mordecai on the phone with another woman, not realizing it’s Siri on his new phone.

Mordecai starts painting again, inspired by his childhood in Poland, escaping in 1939 before the Nazis invaded. Not everyone in his family was so lucky, he tells Nina, noting that some of his aunts died in the Treblinka concentration camp. Nina — who volunteers at the Jewish Center where Mordecai sometimes visits — doesn’t tell him that she learned that her recently deceased grandfather was an SS guard at Treblinka.

Samel and the script — written by Rudy Gaines, who shares story credit with Samel and Dahlia Heyman — lumbers through the connect-the-dots plot, and spends way too much time on Marvin’s troubles trying to sell a cigar factory he invested in using money borrowed from his dad. More interesting are the animated sequences that depict Mordecai’s memories of Poland and the antisemitism that prompted his family to escape to America.

The best parts of “iMordecai” are Hirsch and Kane, both committing to their sometimes overwritten characters and embodying the movie’s message — that you’re never too old to live a full life — better than the script and direction do.

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‘iMordecai’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 3, at the Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), Megaplex at The District (South Jordan). Megaplex at Legacy Crossing (Centerville) and Megaplex at Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some language, drug use, cigar smoking, and discussions of the Holocaust. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: The title says it all in 'Cocaine Bear,' but the movie could do a lot more with its crazy premise

Say this much for the horror-comedy “Cocaine Bear”: It’s all right there in the title. There’s a bear and a lot of cocaine — what more do you need?

Since I’m asking, I could have used some narrative coherence amid all the drug-fueled animal incoherence. For all the craziness of “Cocaine Bear,” there’s a rote predictability about it, as if director Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect 2,” “Charlie’s Angels”) and screenwriter Jimmy Warden didn’t given every indication they didn’t just think up the concept of a cocaine-snorting bear and went on autopilot the rest of the way.

Actually, there once was a bear who got into some cocaine, back in 1985 — which is enough to kick-start the “inspired by true events” tag at the movie’s beginning. When a drug mule flying over the South dumps duffel bags full of cocaine, and then conks himself in the head and dies without opening his parachute, there’s a race between cops and drug dealers to retrieve the kilo bricks.

What neither side knows is that a black bear got there first, which makes sense because the bags landed in a national forest in Georgia and the bear already lives there. The bear consumes a kilo or two, and gets a hankering for the white powder, and goes sniffing for more — and anyone getting in the way is going to be the bear’s next meal.

Among the humans who cross paths with the bear: 

• Two low-level drug dealers, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), sent by their boss Syd (Ray Liotta, who finished work on the movie just before dying last May) to retrieve the kilos before Syd’s Colombian business partners get mad.

• Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a detective on the trail of the cocaine.

• A nurse, Sari (Keri Russell), who realizes her teen daughter Deedee (Brooklynn Prince) has skipped school with her friend Henry (Christian Convery) to go into the woods.

• The Forest Service ranger, Liz (Margo Martindale), who reluctantly escorts Sari up toward a waterfall, when Liz would rather be making time with a forest biologist, Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). 

• Various other actors who probably had to have various body parts molded by the special-effects crew, so their characters could be chomped into and scattered about convincingly.

Banks, as a director, has an ear for a good throwaway joke or comic performance, and she has the sense not to get in the way of Martindale or Liotta, to name two, when they’re giving more than the material contains. 

But “Cocaine Bear” reaches a point of diminishing returns, where everyone involved —onscreen, behind the camera and in the audience — realizes there’s not as much material here as was needed to fill 90-or-so minutes. Starting with a crazy premise gets you so far (e.g., “Snakes on a Plane”), but you have to have a plan for getting out of the woods.

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‘Cocaine Bear’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout. Running time: 95 minutes.

Review: 'Jesus Revolution' tells a fascinating story of a '70s Christian youth movement, but chooses the least interesting person to relate it

There are three real-life figures at the center of “Jesus Revolution,” and it’s the movie’s misfortune that only one of the three is still alive today — because he’s the least interesting of the three, and he’s the one through whom we see the other two.

Directors Jon Erwin (who has captured the Christian drama market with his brother Andrew) and Brent McCorkle dive into the Christian scene in Southern California in the last 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time when, as a backlash to the “tune in, turn on, drop out” ethos of Timothy Leary and the Haight-Ashbury crowd, a fair number of young people found their high of choice in Jesus.

The story starts with Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), a Baptist minister in a sleepy, under-attended church in Costa Mesa, Calif. His rebel daughter, Janette (Ally Ioannides), on a dare, brings home a hippie — a charismatic preacher of the gospel, Lonnie Frisbee (played by Jonathan Roumie, who portrays Jesus in the series “The Chosen”). Chuck is dubious of Lonnie at first, but soon recognizes that his interest in Jesus is genuine, and could bring in a new generation of parishioners.

The early going is rough, particularly when Chuck’s older church members threaten the pastor with his job for embracing the ever-growing ranks of young, barefoot worshippers. (In one of the nicest scenes in the movie, Chuck responds to the complaints about the dirt being tracked into the church by doing the most Christ-like thing he can think of: He washes the young people’s feet.)

Threading through the rise of Chuck’s Calvary Chapel and Lonnie’s prominence as a faith healer, and the clash that threatens to undo the movement, comes our third player. That’s Greg Laurie (played by Joel Courtney, from “The Kissing Booth” and its sequels), a teen who drops out of military school and follows his bliss — and a cute girl, Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow) — through the hippie community, but finds the drug scene a dead end.

At his lowest point, Greg finds Lonnie, and becomes part of his following. Greg becomes a youth leader, drawing comic-book flyers to spread the good word, and assisting Chuck and Lonnie. Finding Jesus also leads Greg to finding Cathe again, and lets him hope they may make a life together.

The script, adapted from Laurie’s memoir by Erwin and Jon Gunn (who also co-wrote “American Underdog,” the Erwin Brothers’ biographical drama about football star Kurt Warner), also details Greg’s hard relationship with his mother (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), depicted as a bleached blonde alcoholic who clings to her son because the other men in her life cut out on her. It’s a thankless role, but Williams-Paisley finds some genuine moments of grace in it.

“Jesus Revolution” has its highs and its lows. The best parts include Grammer’s low-key performance as Chuck, accepting early Lonnie’s arrival as a chance to spread God’s word, and Roumie’s portrayal of Lonnie, which hints at the darker strains in his backstory. (The movie sidesteps how Lonnie died; Google it.) The negatives mostly are the parts of the story involving Laurie, from the melodramatic mother drama to a bland romantic subplot.

The Erwins know how to present a strong, Christian-based story that doesn’t fall back on the lazy storytelling of “miracles” — “American Underdog” wasn’t afraid to make its Christian characters fallible, and their documentary “The Jesus Music” (which covers parts of the history shown here) was admirable for telling the human stories in the Christian music world. One wishes that, in “Jesus Revolution,” they could have showed a little more faith in their subjects.

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‘Jesus Revolution’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong drug content involving teens and some thematic elements. Running time: 120 minutes.

Review: 'Bunker' is a technically smart but narratively confused horror thriller, trapped inside a World War I trench

Sometimes, I end up watching a movie with my brain running on parallel tracks — admiring the technical achievement, but perplexed at the narrative flow — and that’s what happened watching “Bunker,” a micro-budget horror movie that’s expertly crafted but doesn’t make a lick of sense.

The movie starts in a trench somewhere near the front during World War I, amid a mix of British and American soldiers waiting for the next artillery bursts to drop on them from the Germans. Enter an officious British officer, Lt. Turner (Patrick Moltane), with orders that his men should make a push toward the front — so, as they say in “Blackadder Goes Forth,” they can “move Field Marshall Haig’s drinks trolley six inches closer to Berlin.”

The surprise comes when they get out of the trench, and nobody is trying to kill them. There’s all silence from the German side, and as Turner’s men get closer to the German trench, there’s no sign of anyone alive defending it. They find a door to a bunker, blocked off from the outside. Undeterred, Lt. Turner orders some men to open it.

Inside, they find a mass grave of dead German soldiers, and one German apparently being crucified — with bayonets nailing his hands to a roof beam, and his torso spooled with barbed wire. Turner orders his men to take the German down, and tells the American medic, Pvt. Segura (Eddie Ramos), to treat his wounds.

Soon, though, the men feel something dark and foreboding in the bunker. Some of the men seem to go mad — like the mustachioed Lance Cpl. Walker (Adriano Gatto), who starts to remove his own skin with a straight razor. Others notice that the dead Germans in the mass grave may not be so dead.

After some harrowing scenes, an artillery shell seals the bunker shut, and there are only five people left inside: Lt. Turner, Pvt. Segura, American soldier Baker (Julian Feder), English soldier Lewis (Quinn Moran), and the formerly strung-up German, Kurt (Luke Baines). Turner seems to be losing his mind, but that’s not the least of their problems, because something is causing the men to spit up white goo with something alive in it.

Director Adrian Langley, a veteran of both low-budget horror and Christmas romances, handles the technical side of this claustrophobic horror movie expertly. He provides a good sense of space within the tight quarters, and the brain-corroding effects of the soldiers’ captivity and whatever supernatural thing is eating away at them. 

Langley and screenwriter Michael Huntsman employ echoes of “Alien,” “The Exorcist” and David Cronenberg-style body horror, but it never feels like plagiarism or a showily ironic “homage.” It’s more like a compendium of everything that makes humans terrified, all distilled into one movie.

(Full disclosure: Michael Huntsman and one of the film’s producers, James Huntsman, are part of the Huntsman family familiar to people in Utah. James Huntsman’s brother Jon Jr. used to be the governor of Utah, and U.S. ambassador to Russia and China. Their brother Paul is chairman of the board of The Salt Lake Tribune, where I have my day job.)

Alas, the technical prowess shown early in “Bunker” can’t quite sustain enough tension or chills as the movie proceeds to its grimly predictable conclusion. War is hell, so who’s going to notice another demon?

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‘Bunker’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 24, in theaters. Rated R for violence, gore and some language. Running time: 108 minutes.

Review: 'Close' is a shattering drama about a friendship that ends at 13, and the emotional loss when that happens.

What happens when a longtime friendship just … stops? That’s the thoughtful, shattering question at the heart of “Close,” one of the best movies about childhood in a long time.

Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are, at 13 years old, the best of friends. They ride bikes together, hang out at recess together, and run around together on the flower farm Léo’s parents operate — though they’re just as likely to have sleepovers at Rémi’s place. Rémi’s mom, Sophie (Émilie Dequenne), is nearly as close to Léo as Léo’s own mom, Nathalie (Léa Drucker).

The boys are so close, and so lacking in self-consciousness about it, that they’re taken aback when a girl in their class asks Léo and Rémi if they’re a couple. Both say no, quickly. But Léo becomes quite rattled by the suggestion.

Soon, Léo’s behavior changes. He doesn’t hang out with Rémi so much. He joins the hockey team, as if to assure everyone — including himself — that he’s masculine enough. And when Rémi confronts Léo on the playground, Léo rejects his friend with brutal finality, driving Rémi to drastic behavior.

Director Lukas Dhont and his co-screenwriter, Angelo Tijssens, dig deep into the emotional weight of Léo’s seemingly rash decision — and in Rémi’s heartbreaking response to it. The story explores how this one act of childhood thoughtlessness creates ripples that are authentic in their dark emotional weight.

Dhont also has gathered, in Dambrine and De Waele, two of the sharpest younger actors around — two boys who channel the wrenching emotions of anger, cruelty, sadness and despair in this perfectly calibrated drama. They’re lifted up by the supporting grown-ups, particularly Dequenne, who was in a similar role as a teen in the Dardennes brothers’ 1999 drama “Rosetta.”

“Close” melds these elements into a cohesive whole, so subtlety that you can’t separate them, just as you can’t separate these boys without severe consequences.

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‘Close’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving suicide and brief strong language. Running time: 104 minutes; in French, Flemish and Dutch, with subtitles.

Review: Looking at the short films — animated, live-action and documentary — nominated for Academy Awards

One of the worst byproducts of Hollywood’s tight grip on our movie imaginations is that the short film — a story told in less than 40 minutes — is largely dismissed by the great moviegoing public.

It wasn’t always this way, particularly with the animated cartoons that once preceded the feature film. That was also a time when you knew what studio made the movie by which characters showed up in the cartoon before it — Tom & Jerry meant MGM, Popeye meant Paramount, and Bugs Bunny and his Looney Toons cohort meant Warner Bros.

The Academy Awards allow us to bring short films back into the conversation, with the three categories devoted to them: Animated, live-action and documentary. Shorts International has made it easier in recent years, by compiling the shorts into theatrical programs — two of which are opening this week at the Broadway Centre Cinemas, and the third (documentary) opening the following week.

I’m ranking each of the nominees, in order of personal preference. These aren’t the movies I think will win the Oscar in these categories. These are listed by how much I liked them.

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Animated short films

1. “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” directed by Lachlan Pendragon • This meta stop-motion gem shows Neil, a cubicle drone who comes to the upsetting realization that he’s a figure in a stop-motion cartoon. Brilliant and a little spooky.

2. “The Ice Merchants,” directed by João Gonzalez • A father and son live in a house hanging on the side of a cliff, making ice and selling it to the townsfolk below. A dialogue-free story about family and grief, ending with the most heartbreaking single image I’ve seen on film in a long time.

3. “My Year of Dicks,” directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir, written by Pamela Ribon • Ribon’s memoir of trying to lose her virginity in 1991 forms the basis for an episodic digest of bad boyfriends, with each vignette beautifully told in a different animation style.

4. “The Flying Sailor,” directed by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby • A surreal little gem from Canada, based on the true story of an explosion in Halifax harbor in 1917 — and how a sailor flew two kilometers and survived.

5. “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” directed by Charlie Mackesy • The technique here is gorgeous, melding seemingly hand-drawn animation to computerized backdrops. But the story of a lost boy and the animals who befriend him (voiced by Tom Hollander, Idris Elba and Gabriel Byrne) features stilted writing and forced moralizing. Because of that, I’m afraid it’s going to win.

—

Live-action short films

1. “The Red Suitcase,” directed by Cyrus Neshvad • A 16-year-old Iranian girl arrives at the Luxembourg airport, terrified of meeting the man her father has arranged for her to marry. Themes of female liberation play out with the propulsion of a good thriller.

2. “Le Pupille,” directed by Alice Rohrwacher • The Italian director (“Happy as Lazaro”) tells a charming story of little girls in a Catholic boarding school at the start of World War II, confounding the Mother Superior (played by the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher) with their habit of acting like children. Funny, observant and utterly charming — and the likely Oscar winner.

3. “Night Ride (Nattrikken),” directed by Erik Tweiten • A little person (Sigrid Kandal Husjord), tired of waiting for her tram to leave the station, hops in the driver’s seat and speed down the track — until the next station, when she picks up some passengers who present a moral dilemma. A smart and thoughtful story about transphobia, a topic that’s too much on everyone’s mind these days.

4. “Ivalu,” directed by Andres Waller • An Indigenous girl (Mile Heilmann Kreutzmann) in a village in Greenland goes looking for her missing sister, aided by a raven who may be prophetic or a prankster. A nice mix of topical seriousness and magical realism.

5. “An Irish Goodbye,” directed by Tom Berkeley and Ross White • When their mother dies, two Northern Irish brothers — one living in London, the other stayed home — argue about what to do next, including completing the wishes on Mum’s bucket list. A little too whimsical and precious for its own good.

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Documentary shorts

1. “Stranger at the Gate,” directed by Joshua Seftel • An ex-Marine with PTSD and a chip on his shoulder decides he’s going to blow up the Islamic center in his town of Muncie, Indiana. Then he goes inside to meet the people he wants to kill. This documentary plays like a thriller, and ends someplace you would never expect.

2. “Haulout,” directed by Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva • The filmmakers, who are siblings, get remarkably up close and personal with a marine biologist who goes to the same cabin in the Siberian Arctic to greet the annual walrus migration — but each year, things keep getting worse in one area. Spartan narration and stark cinematography convey the desolation of the place, made worse by climate change.

3. “How Do You Measure a Year?,” directed by Jay Rosenblatt • The director, who was nominated in this category last year for his examination of his middle-school days in “When We Were Bullies.”works off a simple premise: Every year, from age 2 to 18, Rosenblatt filmed his daughter, Ella, to ask the same series of questions. We watch Ella grow from a bored toddler to a thoughtful, mature adult — one who, in spite of arguments, really loves her dad.

4. “The Martha Mitchell Effect,” directed by Anne Alvergue • A profile of Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, and her startling commentary about the Watergate break-in. Jam-packed with information, and a slew of audio interviews, but anyone with any knowledge of the ’70s will feel under informed.

5. “The Elephant Whisperers,” directed by Kartiki Gonsalves • The movie follows Bomman and Bellie, a South Indian couple cares for a young baby elephant— in a thoughtful but predictable movie.

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Oscar-nominated animated short films

★★★1/2

Oscar-nominated live-action short films

★★★

Oscar-nominated documentary short films

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, February 17 (animated and live-action), and February 24 (documentary), at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), and March 10 at the Century 16 (South Salt Lake), Century Union Heights 16 (Sandy), Cinemark 24 at Jordan Landing (West Jordan) and Cinemark 16 (Provo). Not rated, but the animated shorts are probably rated PG-13 for depictions of sexuality and nudity; the live-action shorts are probably PG-13 for language in at least one film; and the documentary shorts are probably PG-13 for language. Running time: 93 minutes for animated shorts, 112 minutes for live-action shorts, and 163 minutes for the documentary shorts; four of the live-action shorts and two of the documentary shorts are in languages other than English, with subtitles.

Review: 'Quantumania' takes Ant-Man and The Wasp to the subatomic level, but the potential for Marvel's new villain is huge

Appropriately for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s tiniest heroes, the charms of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” are small, but still satisfying,

Life is pretty good for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), the ex-con and now hero because of his work helping to save the world as Ant-Man, part of The Avengers group who saved half of humanity and defeated Thanos. Now he’s settled down to a calm life with girlfriend, fellow superhero and philanthropist Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Occasionally Scott has to bail his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) out of jail for acts of civil disobedience, and endure Cassie’s criticism that her dad has quit caring about helping people.

Cassie, aided by Hope and Hope’s inventor father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), has been experimenting with creating a device to survey the subatomic universe called the “quantum realm.” When Hank’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), realizes Cassie’s device involves sending a signal into the quantum realm, she tells her to turn it off — but not before the device springs to life and starts sucking all the lab equipment, Hank’s ant farm, and eventually the five of them down into the subatomic.

Scott and Cassie get separated from the rest, and end up with a group of rebels trying to avoid the oppressive leader of this realm. Hope, Hank and Janet end up elsewhere, with Janet — who spent 30 years in the quantum realm (this was covered in 2018’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp”) — keeping secrets about why she’s so scared of returning. Janet leads Hope and Hank through the seedier elements of this place, which mostly involves a not-so-pleasant few minutes with a local scoundrel played by Bill Murray.

Ultimately, we find out about who is making Janet so nervous: Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors), a  supervillain whose evil spans the multiverse.

Director Peyton Reed, now on his third movie with “Ant-Man” in the title, knows not to take this bug-themed superhero stuff too seriously. That’s why the rebels include a guy made entirely of goo, and another a telepath (William Jackson Harper, from “The Good Place”) who’s clearly annoyed by what people always think about. And it’s why Kang has a subordinate villain, straight out of Marvel canon, whose reveal is pretty hilarious.

The screenplay, the first produced feature script by “Rick & Morty” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” writer Jeff Loveness, has some funny bits, along with gaps in its credulity that aren’t papered over by saying “it’s the quantum realm — the rules are different here.” Still, the plot gives plenty of chances for Rudd’s easygoing charm to win us over, and to give the supporting players — especially Pfeiffer — room to shine.

The most intriguing thing about “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” is Majors as Kang — who, we already know from his appearance in Marvel’s series “Loki” and in promises from Marvel Uber-producer Kevin Feige, is going to be the big bad guy for several movies to come. Based on the evidence here, he will be someone worth following through this new phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’

★★★

Opening in theaters Friday, February 17. Rated PG-13 for violence/language and action. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'Magic Mike's Last Dance' has a silly plot, but when Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek are dancing steamily, the story won't matter

If I was able to separate what works from what doesn’t in “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” I’d borrow the rating system from “A Chorus Line” — dance: 10; coherence: 3.

The third installment of the franchise has our hero, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), back on the bottom of the economic staircase — losing his business in the pandemic economy, and back tending bar for catered events. Occasionally one of the super-rich folks at a fundraiser he’s working will recognize him from his old job as a stripper — a job he swears he has given up for good.

However, like another Floridian, Tom Brady, Mike finds he just can’t quit. After one bartending gig, the client — Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault) — offers him a large sum of money to demonstrate his lap-dancing skills. Mike obliges, but when they end up in bed together, Mike magnanimously declares he wasn’t going to take her money anyway.

Maxandra makes Mike a counter-offer: A trip to London, for a monthlong job. Maxandra, we’re told, is in the middle of a nasty divorce to Roger Rattigan (Alan Cox), a media billionaire who doesn’t want to let her go. One asset Maxandra is keeping in the divorce is an old theater, which has been playing the same stodgy costume drama for years. We’re told that Maxandra was in the cast 20 years earlier, which is where she met Roger, who was sentimental enough to bankroll it in perpetuity. 

Maxandra, not so sentimental, wants to undo the patriarchal bent of the play, and thinks Mike has the vision to transform it into a treatise on feminine desire. And strippers. Mike agrees to direct the show, but he makes it clear to Maxandra that he won’t be dancing — a disappointment to any woman in the audience who believes it, and doesn’t suss out that Tatum’s going to be putting on his moves at some point.

So, yes, the plot here — screenwriter Reid Carolin, who wrote the first two “Magic Mike” movies, is back for the trilogy — is as tearaway as the costumes the male stripper revue wears. Adding Maxandra’s grumpy valet, Victor (Ayub Khan-Din), for comic relief doesn’t help matters. Nor does the addition of Maxandra’s sullen teen daughter, Zadie (newcomer Jemelia George), who also provides the droning narration that sounds like a poorly researched term paper on dance.

Steven Soderbergh returns to directing for this third installment (he did the first one, then handed off “Magic Mike XXL” to his frequent second-unit director Gregory Jacobs), and he seems so wrapped up in the dance numbers that he doesn’t notice the movie’s flimsy excuse for a plot.

With the dancing here, exuberantly performed and beautifully captured (by Soderbergh as cinematographer, using his Peter Andrews alias), some may not care about the lack of good sense in the story department. The opening duet between Tatum and Hayek Pinault shows both still have the moves and the sex appeal. (Men of a certain age fondly remember Hayek in “From Dusk Till Dawn,” pouring tequila down her leg into Quentin Tarantino’s toe-sucking mouth.)

The seductive, sultry dancing isn’t quite enough to make audiences overlook the storytelling shortcomings in  “Magic Mike’s Last Dance.” At least, not for me. Your mileage, and your willingness to drool over Tatum’s six-pack abs, may vary.

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‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexual material and language. Running time: 112 minutes.