Magic Mike hits a few bumps (and grinds)

Forget Marvel’s The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises … we all know that the most anticipated movie of the summer is Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike. From the moment people (mostly women) heard that there was going to be a movie about male strippers starring Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer, Joe Mangianello, Adam Rodriguez and Matthew McConaughey, all of those other summer blockbusters were forgotten (and judging by the screaming at the screening I attended, this was a very excited crowd … at least at first).

I’m sure you’ve seen the ads all over TV hyping Magic Mike as something like the funny, male stripper romp of the year. Except this really is a Steven Soderbergh film, and while he has lightened up with the Ocean’s franchise, I have a feeling viewers expecting the sunny side of stripping will come away mildly disappointed. Here’s the story in a nutshell: Mike (Tatum) has a dream to make custom furniture. To do that, he’s become an entrepreneur dabbling in everything from roofing to car detailing to stripping. He’s saved up a nice bundle of cash from his various endeavors, and the club he strips at is about to move from a small venue in Tampa to a real Miami showplace. Enter Adam (Pettyfer) — Mike refers to his as The Kid — a down-on-his-luck 19-year-old who Mike brings to his boss Dallas (McConaughey) to help out around the club but gets forced onto the stage one night when Tarzan (Kevin Nash) incapacitates himself. And a star is born. Except things take a dark turn as the club’s success changes Dallas’ behavior towards Mike, and Adam finds a way to make even more money by dealing ecstacy provided by the club’s DJ, which puts a strain on his relationship with Mike and his own sister Brooke (Cody Horn), whom Mike is also falling for.

Judging by the audience reaction as the film progressed, the heaviness of the storyline started to mute the excitement of the screaming women behind me. They could barely find it in themselves to let out even the tiniest of whoops by that point. I think these plot twists also affected my enjoyment of the movie as well, because it is pretty light and funny at the beginning. But when we get to a point that you start disliking some of the main characters because you see there’s nothing to redeem them by the time the credits roll, that does not make for the best movie-going experience. However, I do think if you’re prepared for this and aren’t going in expecting to have a great time like you really are at a strip club, then you’ll probably find yourself engaged more in the greater story (which may also make it more appealing to a male audience who would not be caught dead at a male stripper movie).

On the plus side, you get to see plenty of Channing Tatum (if that’s your bag) and he really inhabits the role (which makes sense since it’s based on his own experience as a stripper), making Mike utterly charming and someone you want to root for to fulfill his dream. Alex Pettyfer is as much the star of the film as Tatum, and he brings a lot of realness to his teenager who stumbles on to something big, hits a rough patch, but never has the maturity to deal with it properly, making him pretty unlikable by the end. McConaughey was given a gift with his role, basically playing that persona of himself that we all know by now (including playing bongos on stage almost naked), but he has a dark streak as well. Cody Horn gets the thankless role of “the voice of reason” but I’m still not sure if she was just supposed to play the role as emotionally vacant or if she just can’t act. I did like Olivia Munn as Mike’s occasional fling Joanna, but she has a plot twist that seems to come completely out of nowhere just to push Mike towards Brooke. Unfortunately, Bomer, Mangianello and Rodriguez are nothing but eye-candy window dressing, barely (no pun intended) figuring into the plot with maybe two lines of dialogue each. They could have just hired real Chippendale’s guys to play these roles instead of wasting the talents of these actors (but their fans may enjoy seeing them dance, so they may not mind that they have nothing else to do).

Soderbergh pulls out all of his visual tricks, giving the outdoor scenery a golden, almost sepia hue that just looks gorgeous, while shooting and editing the dancing scenes with a lot of style and energy. Unfortunately, Reid Carolin‘s script (his first feature film) ultimately doesn’t deliver the goods with his sometimes cliched situations and out of left field plot twists. I guess the blame for my mixed feelings about the film really fall on the studio publicity department that, again, is misrepresenting the film as something it’s not (just like they did with Dark Shadows). I wouldn’t have minded a deeper character study of what life is really like for a male stripper, but going in and not expecting to have it be a downer really affects one’s enjoyment of the film. So be warned! Yes, Magic Mike starts out light with some humor as Adam gets into the stripper lifestyle and Mike does his little “I think I like her” dance with Brooke, but it will turn and show you that even though everything looks happy-go-lucky on the surface, there’s some real drama down below.

Clacked by Chuck Duncan
on Jun 29, 2012 @ 01:30 EST5EDT