Friday, June 29, 2012
MOVIE REVIEW
‘MAGIC MIKE’
Grade: B
Credits: Directed by Steven Soderbergh; cast includes Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer and Cody Horn
Rating: R for sexual content, brief graphic nudity, language, drug use.
Length: 1:50
By Connie Ogle | McClatchy Newspapers
11111take anyway — what’s most distinctive about Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike” is its sense of fun.
This film about male strippers in Tampa, inspired by actor Channing Tatum’s real-life experiences, is as similar to “Showgirls” as stripping is to investment banking.
Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin purposely pay only scant attention to the dirty side of the business (the drugs, the fluffers, the general seediness) in order to put forth an entirely original yet unsurprising idea: Sometimes, hot young guys take off their clothes on stage to reap the rewards of women, money and the never-ending party.
“Magic Mike” is about one such guy (Tatum) who appreciates all that stuff, until a need to be taken seriously begins to outweigh his desire for easy cash and easier sex. Mike has a couple of day jobs, but by night he’s the star at Xquisite, a club run and hosted by the enterprising Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, whose hipbones deserve a sequel). Dallas wears a cowboy hat and does not seem to own many shirts, and he acts as sort of a madam to his coterie of dancers. As far as he’s concerned, he has the best job in the world.
Mike likes his job, too. He has a healthy sense of humor about his night moves, but he’s got dreams. He wants to build custom furniture and needs a bank loan to finance his long-range plans. He wants his elusive hook-up (Olivia Munn) to take him seriously, too, but she tends to look at him as if he’s a particularly tender, rare cut of steak, one she’s not much interested in talking to. And when he meets the younger, directionless Adam (Alex Pettyfer) and ushers him into the fold, he recognizes himself in the kid’s eager embrace of the lifestyle and isn’t sure he likes what he sees.
Essentially, “Magic Mike” is a love story about a guy who has to grow up in order to get the girl, and in that respect the movie is as safe and predictable as warm milk. But Soderbergh never lets the drama run away with him.
Even the most harrowing scene doesn’t overshadow the movie’s light tone.
Soderbergh’s attention to detail is, well, exquisite, and the film’s humor is welcome and genuinely funny.
The utter lack of heavy handedness is even more refreshing; “Magic Mike” is not a sociological study, though it raises some interesting questions.
The movie never comes right out and lectures us about how women go to strip clubs for different reasons from men, but the film suggests that idea effectively through its many stripping sequences.