Grade B: I suspect that many who went to see the movie Magic Mike did so because they were interested in seeing lots of well-toned men wearing next to nothing gyrating on-screen to dance tunes. And while there is much of that in this movie, there is much more to Magic Mike than beef-cakes in banana-hammocks.
Channing Tatum plays Mike who strips on-stage at the Xquisite Strip Club club for a cut of the door and tucked bucks. But what Mike really wants is to open his own shop and build custom furniture for a living. Not because he has many objections to his life of loose women, drugs and rock’n roll, but more because he sees where the life leads in club-owner Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). Who, although well to do has some odd views of the world and the people in it. To this enters “The Kid” Adam (Alex Pettyfer), new to the stripping game who sees Dallas as a role model and anything Mike or Adam’s sister Brooke (Cody Horn) might say to the otherwise as lame.
What I found most interesting about Magic Mike was that it didn’t follow that story path of similar movies like this where the characters find themselves in a questionable lifestyle but loving living on the edge, then going over the edge and suffering the consequences before finally discovering the true meaning of life in their downfall. Instead in Magic Mike, it’s more a story about two guys, Mike and Adam, one discovering all the benefits that come with a stripping lifestyle while the other who’s trying to find a way out if only for a pesky bad credit score.
Magic Mike is the second film this year to be directed by Steven Soderbergh and star Tatum, the other being Haywire.
