Stepping Up to the Mike

I'm taking a day off from trip stories to share something I did more recently. Last weekend, I went to see Magic Mike, the "male stripper movie" directed by Steven Soderbergh. The movie apparently came about on the set of Haywire, when actor Channing Tatum was regaling folks between takes with tales of his before-he-was-a-star days as a stripper. Soderbergh (who has been claiming he's retiring for more than a year now, yet can't seem to stop making films) felt that it sounded like there was a movie in there somewhere, and in fact made it his next movie.

There was a fair-sized audience in the auditorium for a later screening past the opening weekend of the movie. Yes, mostly women. And they weren't shy about sharing their opinions as we all funneled out of the theater after the movie. Several were declaring "I thought there'd be more [dancing/stripping/nudity]." Now on the one hand, I think if you really wanted that, you'd have better options than a mainstream Hollywood movie. Go rent an actual adult movie. I think under these circumstances, you ought to be expecting an actual plot and not just a two-hour montage of flesh.

On the other hand... they kind of have a point. Knowing that they were making "the male stripper movie," a movie probably no straight man anywhere would see voluntarily (until someone tells him he can see a topless Olivia Munn just three minutes in, anyway), I would expect the filmmakers to put in a reasonable amount of the content their audience was expecting to see.

There are one or two very brief group numbers, each with roughly the complexity of a group number on Glee -- and frankly, not all that much less appropriate for prime time television. It all comes off like the secondary cast of the film couldn't actually dance, and the edit was trying to hide the fact. There are a couple of solo numbers featuring Channing Tatum, in which it's abundantly clear that he worked hard in his former career; most actors would need a stunt double for this kind of stuff.

But mostly, there's just a lot of talking. Tatum is Mike, a would-be furniture business owner trying to get out of the stripper life in the long term, even as he's trying to pull "new guy" Adam (Alex Pettyfer) into it. Safely. He's promised Adam's sister Brooke (Cody Horn) that he'll keep the young man from going over the edge. And from there, we watch the steady and certain downward spiral, in a storyline vaguely reminiscent of (though far more entertaining, at least, than) Scarface.

There's actually quite a lot of humor peppered throughout the film in fun one-liners and playful interactions between pairs of characters. These moments definitely work, but in part just for being a respite from the rather dreary and too-conventional plot. The one actor who seems to be having maximum fun all the time is thus, unsurprisingly, the best thing about the film -- Matthew McConaughey knocks it out of the park as the always-amped, sleazy and supportive all at once club owner Dallas. He gets laughs treading close to his Dazed and Confused character in one scene. He gets laughs evoking his somewhat-well-known real-life naked bongo session. He gets laughs, period. It's the sort of performance that would never in a million years be considered for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but probably objectively should.

But unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn't nearly so fun. I'd call it a middle of the road C. At best, it's one to rent later. Though if you consider it, I think you should ask yourself what you're really hoping to see, and ask yourself if renting some other movie might not better fill the need. Ahem.