Beautiful bums. Bulging biceps. Buff chests. Boobs. Magic Mike is bounteous in eye candy. I seriously considered leaving this post as just that. Nah...you already knew about the eye candy and you want to know if it's any good, don't you?
This is a fun film for chicks to go see with a group of girlfriends, as I did with the lovely D & B. This is not a good movie for a girl to drag her boyfriend along to see. The 2 guys dragged into this by their girlfriends when we went probably felt really embarrassed, they looked embarrassed as they walked out! The aforementioned boobs are only seen twice and only briefly compared to the enormous slabs of man flesh on show, as you'd expect in a movie about male strippers!
Based on the actual life experiences of actor Channing Tatum, who was a male stripper before turning his hand to acting, it's ostensibly meant to be a story about a guy who realises that he eventually has to grow up and stop being a male stripper and get a real job/life. So the fact that in real life he became an actor and then acts as himself in a movie about his life seems to really demonstrate the moral of the story. Not! Obviously the movie is a fictionalised version of real events but I think the serious side of the tale doesn't really come through that well. The problem is that Magic Mike is a little too magical. He's just such a 'perfect' guy, there just aren't people like that in real life. He's handsome, funny, rich, charming, intelligent, running 3 businesses in addition to the stripping, good with his hands, and an amazing dancer. I couldn't find a single flaw in the guy and that was annoying.
The stripping scenes are fantastically fun and in your face, the whole cinema full of chicks were giggling and fanning ourselves throughout. Extreme closeups of the action put you right in there without the embarrassment you would feel at a strip club if it was you being picked up and dry humped on a stage. Channing Tatum is actually an amazing dancer with some ridiculously fast moves. Alex Pettyfer does okay as the new boy Mike recruits so casually who of course makes good. The other guys have some pretty good moves on stage but little else to their roles, but Matthew McConaughey puts in a funny turn as the man-child who will never give the business away. He has a few blush worthy scenes. A new actress on the scene Cody Horn is the uninterested love interest. She had some good dialogue with Channing but I found her 'disapproving' face a bit annoying after a while until she suddenly became interested.
There's not much to this movie so I'd suggest that you not go along purely if your interest arises from this being the latest Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brokovich, Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven etc) directed film. I'd have to say this would be the lightest, fluffiest movie he's ever done. But it is a really good chicks' night out and we've already decided that we will be getting this on DVD for our next girls' night in!
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