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Magic Mike - review
Mike (Channing Tatum) is a man of many talents and loads of charm, he spends his days pursuing the American Dream from as many angles as he can handle. But at night... he's just magic. The hot headliner in an all-male revue, Magic Mike has been rocking the stage at Club Xquisite for years with his original style and over-the-top dance moves. The more the ladies love him, the more they spend, and the happier that makes club owner Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). Seeing potential in a guy he calls the Kid (Alex Pettyfer), Mike takes the 19-year-old under his wing and schools him in the fine arts of dancing, partying, picking up women and making easy money. Meanwhile, Mike meets the Kid's captivating sister, Brooke (Cody Horn). She's definitely someone he'd like to know a lot better, and it looks like he has a chance...until his lifestyle gets in the way.
(taken from here)
(taken from here)
First of all, I am actually twelve years old. I find penisses really, really funny. Some days ago, I imagined penisses with butterfly wings flying over spring meadows and it took me half an hour to calm down again from my laughing fit.
Secondly, I have never ever in my whole life been gayer than while watching this movie. Which is weird because I usually gush about good-looking Marvel-men like 24/7, but Magic Mike and his merry bunch of stripping clichés did absolutely nothing for me – apart from sending me into long, exhausting laughing fits.
So I am clearly not the intended audience for this flick, therefore take my review with a grain of salt.
I liked the movie – it was a solid piece of entertainment and despite the raunchy subject it was never not respectful to its audience and to its characters.
The relationship between the protagonists, Adam, Mike and Brooke is charming and played very convincingly – probably because it is really understated for Hollywood standards? There is no sad sob-story about Brooke and Adam having no parents, she just feels responsible for him because she is his sister and that’s what siblings do which was actually very refreshing and nice to watch. They even managed to pull off a convincing argument between Brooke and Mike where both stumble over their words and don’t really get to the point as people are wont to do when they are truly upset and whenever one of them was on-screen I felt like watching actual people deal with actual problems – granted they are very pretty people with very unusual problems, but the emotions were true nonetheless and they each have more than one character trait! Wohoo!
Adam for example starts of as a rather useless dreamer, freeloader and all-around liar who drives his sister crazy with his underachieving attitude but right when he makes his first few bucks by stripping he immediately offers to pay Mike who drives him around all the time which was such a nice, subtle scene and did wonders for his character development.
And then there are scenes like this where the movie jumps the shark so hard that you are not sure whether to laugh or to cry or just go with it.
Not gonna lie, I was screaming with laughter. McConaughey as Dallas is a riot in every single scene. He is so over the top, such a show-off and absolutely delightful – when you are into these kinds of characters which I am not that much, admittedly, but I enjoyed his performance nonetheless.
Sadly, he is one of the only non-main characters to get fleshed out appropriately; all of Mike’s stripping buddies are left with one-liners and are nothing more than their stage-personas. I am truly sorry for all the Matt Bomer fangirls who probably flooded the movie theaters only to get disappointed by his ... two and a half minutes of screentime (most of them spent half naked, so a certain portion of those fangirls should have been happy nonetheless) and his one and a half lines of dialogue. The time he spends in clothes is not wasted though.
Don’t get me wrong the dance scenes are sexy – but I mostly enjoyed them because of the silly acting like the cowboy stint (because cowboys) and because I adore synchronized dancing or rather well done dancing in general. I really couldn’t care less about the lack of shirts everywhere which is weird because the men are all rather attractive? Whatever, I am old and weird.
The funniest, most over the top scene where I really couldn’t keep it together anymore must have been this one though:
Oh my fucking god, the machine gun what the fuck did I just watch I am dying here ahahahaha... *dying from laughter yet again*
Now that we established that the dancing scenes are really nice to look at – does the plot hold up?
Not in the least bit and it’s actually a shame. The story focuses on Mike trying to build a life outside of stripping and failing which could have been interesting but it feels like every romcom-plot ever and instead of a slow character growth you have three scenes where everything goes to hell for Mike which are very formulaic and like filmschool 101.
The whole movie even turns into an afterschool special during the last third – everything is fine and peachy for everyone but as soon as Adam gets involved with drug dealers he loses control and drags everyone down with him. Which is probably not that far from reality really, but was there no other way to show this than with tilted camera angles and red/blue-filters everywhere? You could at least try, Soderbergh, you are a goddamn award-winning director after all. Oh and why the hell is everything so freaking yellow in this film? SO. FREAKING. YELLOW.
Admittedly, the very open ending saves the film from being too bland and formulaic in the end and although there are no solutions and everything is bound to end in tears and vomit, the movie feels very uplifting – maybe it’s the dancing after all.
All in all, it's a truly entertaining film and if you are looking for a bit of fun with decent looking half naked men and well done dancing scenes, go for “Magic Mike” – but if you are looking for an accurate portrayal of how hard the showbiz treats its participants... yeah, no. (At least is not as bland as “Burlesque”, thank the Lord)
Bonus:
SpOn, stop being weird:
In seinen besten Momenten ist “Magic Mike” dagegen seinem großen Vorbild “Saturday Night Fever” sehr nah und wagt es, zu erkunden, wo das stolze Ausstellen von Männlichkeit ins Gegenteil umschlägt und zur unbarmherzigen Verdinglichung der Männer wird. […]
– SPIEGEL ONLINE
This is actually not happening anywhere ever and I will shower the movie with my undying love for that – nobody is crying about “ze poor menz feels” when the women are touching them, it’s all very professional and down to earth – just like a lot of businesses are run, actually, without anyone making a fuzz about the whole undressing part. Thank you, movie.