As an 18-year-old, long before he became a full-fledged movie star, Channing Tatum worked as a male stripper in Tampa, Fla., and later pursued making a film based on his experience. Such was the inception of Magic Mike (2012), directed by Steven Soderbergh. In the film, Tatum played Mike Lane, a Tampa man with grandiose entrepreneurial aspirations. In the interim, he supports himself through a series of odd jobs, including performing at Xquisite Strip Club, a venue operated by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey).
Magic Mike became a critical and commercial success. It ended up on many top-10 lists and generated Oscar buzz for McConaughey. Shot on a modest $7 million budget, the film raked in more than $167 million worldwide.
The sequel, Magic Mike XXL, opens three years after Mike bowed out as a stripper. He has started a fledgling company, which crafts handmade furniture. One day, Mike receives a phone call and is lured to a faux funeral. It turns out that his buddies from the strip club just happen to be passing through town. They are headed to Myrtle Beach, S.C., where they plan to strut their stuff at a male strippers convention, organized by Paris (Elizabeth Banks).
Will Mike reunite with them? “Nah,” he says, telling them he’s moved on. But that night, Mike hears the tune “Pony” playing on Spotify. Suddenly, he’s dancing up a storm in his workshop. The lure of resuming life as an exotic male dancer proves irresistible to Mike.
The new story was not as tempting, however, to some of the original cast members. McConaughey has reinvented himself as a serious actor through Bernie, Mud and The Dallas Buyers Club. You won’t see him reprising his role in this sequel. Similarly M.I.A. are Brooke (Cody Horn), Mike’s jealous girlfriend, and her younger brother, Adam (Alex Pettyfer), who Mike was supposed to be mentoring. All storylines associated with these characters are eliminated. The sequel also ditches the economic imperative, which had compelled Mike to become a stripper in the original.
How does this film fill the narrative void? Well, there’s a feisty young woman, Zoe (Amber Heard), who sees Mike micturating on the beach. This sparks some contentious badinage between them. Do you think that the relationship might eventually turn amorous? Then, there’s Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello), whose phallus is so enormous that it frightens women away. He meets Joan, (Andie MacDowell), a woman who indicates that she’s never had sex with anyone but her husband. Will she become the one, who breaks Richie’s dry spell?
En route to Myrtle Beach, Mike stops off at a club in Savannah run by his ex-flame, Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith). The club poses as an upscale entertainment venue; however, it actually functions as a bordello, where post-menopausal females can achieve sexual wish fulfillment with younger men for a price. In addition to Big Dick Richie, there’s another character named Tori Snatch. That is reflective of this film’s level of subtlety.
Magic Mike was a decent film. The sequel is not. The fall-off between the two films is astonishing. It would be easy to blame the new director, Gregory Jacobs, whose main claim to fame is working as a second-unit director to Soderbergh, including on Magic Mike. However, it turns out that Soderbergh was always on the set, working as the film’s cinematographer under his pseudonym, Peter Andrews. So, I remain at a loss to understand how this film could end up being so much worse that its precursor.
Magic Mike XXL is a tawdry affair, devoid of the slightest scintilla of redeeming artistic merit. There is absolutely no magic in it.
Magic Mike XXL
*
Channing Tatum
Amber Heard
Andie MacDowell
Directed by Gregory Jacobs
R
