On its surface, Magic Mike looks like a tasty treat; with oily, semi naked, gorgeous actors dancing around on stage, it’s every woman’s dream, right? Unfortunately not. No amount of butt jiggling can make up for what this movie is lacking; instead of being the bit of good natured fun you might have expected, it is, in fact, a clumsily written and depressing tale about a party-filled life, that manages to turn you ‘off’ rather than ‘on’.
The story centres on male stripper Magic Mike (Channing Tatum, 21 Jump Street) and the world of ‘Xquisite’; a Tampa strip club run by flamboyant manager Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, The Wedding Planner). After Mike encounters lost and confused Adam (Alex Pettyfer, I Am Number Four), he throws him head on into the seemingly flashy and liberating world of stripping, where money and women are yours at the shake of your booty, and the only person not so keen on Adam’s new vocation is his sister, Brooke (Cody Horn, Occupant), who keeps a watchful eye over both her brother and his new friend, as the consequences of their carefree world begin to catch up with them.
For a character based loosely on Tatum himself, Adam (AKA ‘The Kid’) is strangely unlikeable; Pettyfer starts off with a bit of clueless charm but limps his way through the tougher scenes, and by the end Adam becomes a completely selfish character whose journey has no real resolution; and as Channing Tatum often gets a lot of stick from critics and moviegoers for being just a ‘pretty face’ (and having no real acting talent) it’s ironic that here, in a film focused on male beauty, he could have had a chance to prove them wrong; being no stranger to the lifestyle himself (having briefly been a stripper in his younger years), and even having a hand as producer; his usual charms do work well in this setting, and there were some good emotional scenes where he stepped up his game, but unfortunately you can’t help but feel his dancing talent trumps his acting.
Cody Horn and Tatum have a tangible chemistry which makes the romantic plot one of aspects of the film that actually works well, and makes Horn the unexpected stand-out of this cast; as despite having little acting experience, and not a lot to work with in Reid Carolin’s script, she manages to make Brooke a likeable and engaging character. Sadly something the rest of the supporting cast fail miserably to achieve.
The club’s band of strippers, made up of ‘Big Dick’ Richie (Joe Manganiello, True Blood), Ken (Matthew Bomer, White Collar), Tito (Adam Rodriguez, CSI) and Tarzan (Kevin Nash, The Longest Yard) have zero personality, and bring nothing to the table but their bodies for ogling, and with the exception of one scene (where they first meet ‘The Kid’) there lacks all sense of friendship or camaraderie. Instead they all come across as shallow and selfish men, only interested in money, sex, and drugs, with McConaughey’s character being the pinnacle of that; as his attempts to play a sexy, naughty, older man come off more like the sleazy pervert you’d brush off at the bar with a look of disgust.
Choreography was solid, the music choices were well placed, and the dance scenes were all entertaining enough to provide the audience an occasional break from the meandering plot to just enjoy the view. However, aside from the few jokes that made it into the trailers, there wasn’t much else to lighten the mood, and many of the attempts at humour fell flat.
Director Steven Soderbergh has such a mixture of genres and styles in his resume (including movies such as Ocean’s Eleven and Solaris), it’s hard to know what to expect, though he usually manages to pull out a few defining performances, and do something memorable with the material, where here he has achieved neither; flitting between chick flick, gritty drama, and comedy Magic Mike never quite makes a decent go at any of them.
Unlike a film such as ‘The Full Monty’, which aimed to entertain in a tongue-in-cheek fashion and ended on a feel good note; Magic Mike paints male strip clubs as seedy, unattractive places, so much so that you’re routing for Mike to break free from that world; something which isn’t exactly in keeping with a marketing campaign that used the appeal of drooling over hot bodies as a hook. We came to have a good laugh and wolf-whistle at attractive men, not to feel bad about them.
A movie should always know its audience, but somehow a story about the objectification of men managed to be demeaning to women as well (with most of the female characters being portrayed as easy sex objects or promiscuous vixens), and by trying to include too many conflicting ideas about the stripping world, the film flounders like a fish on dry land; with disappointing acting performances, and a director who didn’t seem to know what kind of story he wanted to tell, it’s simply not the whipped cream covered delight many movie goers are after; and, to top it all off, you don’t even get to see Magic Mike’s wand; that alone might have made Mike worth the price of a cinema ticket, but as it stands, you’re better off going to a real strip club, and having actual fun.
