Magic Mike

2012 stripper movie

Rating: 8/20 (Jen: 8/20)

Plot: The titular stripper takes a young pup under his hunky wing and teaches him the profession. Adam's extracurricular activities threaten to get Mike in some trouble and ruin his chances of opening up a furniture-making business.

I completely forgot that I watched this movie with Jen a few weeks ago. She was in the mood for something with "bunches of male stripping," "barely a story at all," and "lots of Matthew McConaughey." I suggested this because I thought it would also have some magic, but unfortunately, there wasn't anything magical at all. This isn't too far from Showgirls in terms of quality. The biggest difference is that it's not unintentionally hilarious. What I'm wondering is what Steven Soderbergh is doing this for? Shouldn't he be hard at work on a sequel to Schizopolis or something? That's a rhetorical question, so please don't answer it. McConaughey is his usual charismatic self and gets to say, "Alright, alright, alright!" enough to satisfy fans of Matthew McConaughey saying, "Alright." And if you're a fan of naked men, this has more than enough of that, too. There were so many stripping scenes here, and although they were all well choreographed and the actors (not professional strippers?) did a fine job, they just felt extraneous halfway through the movie. What this doesn't have is enough of a plot to last for the nearly two hour length of the motion picture or characters that are the least bit interesting. I guess I was supposed to care for Channing Tatum's Magic Mike because he made furniture, but I just couldn't do it. Tatum's not a very good actor either although he seems to be getting a lot of work. For this, it's apparently that he was hired as the lead only because he's pretty. The worst acting in this and quite possibly in anything else is Cody Horn's as Tatum's sister. She must be a Scientologist or something because she showed absolutely no emotion whatsoever in this movie and read all of her lines like she was behind a table reading lines for other actors during auditions. She didn't seem like she wanted to be in the movie at all. I might not be the audience for this movie even though I am a big fan of Matthew McConaughey and male strippers, but I found this really really boring. This is the last time I let Jen pick a movie for a long time!

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