Magic Mike

When I first saw the trailer to the film, "Magic Mike", I thought, you've got to be kidding, a soft porn flick with a Hollywood commercial label to make it 'legit'. Then I realized it was directed by Steven Soderbergh and starred Channing Tatum who has done some quality films in both cases. So I figured, what the heck. I'm game.

Magic Mike (Tatum), as he's called, who is an experienced stripper, takes a younger performer, Adam (Alex Pettyfer) also called The Kid, under his wing and schools him in the arts of stripping, partying, picking up women, and making easy money. But as Mike starts showing Adam a thing or two, he inadvertently ends up creating a monster. Mike has been in the biz for six years working alongside Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), and has learned to respect the biz, albeit in a superficial way, but respect the boundaries of it. Adam, however, is already problematic and this 'lifestyle' just fuels his issues even more. This simply frustrates his sister, Brooke (Cody Horn), who has to bail Adam out emotionally and financially so much of the time.
Somehow Brooke sees something in Mike and tries to help him, knowing that he'd rather make and sell his custom furniture. But as Mike is torn between his loyalty to Dallas, while trying to help Adam and trying to get more funds to help with his furniture business, that custom furniture dream seems to be an impossible reach.

Others to round out the cast are Olivia Munn as Joanna, on again, off again girlfriend of Mike's, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, Kevin Nash as Big Dick Richie, Ken Tito, Tarzan, respectively as Dallas' other strippers, Gabriel Iglesias as Tobias, Reid Carolin as Paul, and James Martin Kelly as Sal.

This was directed with raw grit and intensity by veteran Soderbergh ("Out of Sight" '98, "Erin Brockovich" 2000, "Traffic" 2000, "Ocean's Eleven" '01, "Full-Frontal" '02, "Solaris" '02, "Ocean's Twelve" '04, "The Good German" '06, "Ocean's Thirteen" '07, "Che" Part 1 & Part 2 '08, "The Informant!" '09, "Contagion" '11, "Haywire" '11). He takes these seemingly 'together' individuals and strips them raw in a very vulnerable way. Mike and Adam are grand examples in this film. This was equally well written by Reid Carolin ("Earth Made of Glass" (documentary) '10). It did have a few rough places, but considering the lack of theatrical experience Carolin has, I definitely would like to see more work from him if this is one of his first films. Wow! Considering Tatum did some stripping when he was 18 years old for money and comes from a dancing background, remember "Step Up" '06, this made him a natural for it. In fact he had been wanting to have a film made about his experiences in that part of his life, so this was personal endeavor for Tatum. 

The audience was a definite barometer of how this film was evolving in that at the beginning of the film, Mike had just finished having sex with his girlfriend and he gets up and all can see his butt-naked tush. So, of course, the women in the audience were giggling and oohing and ahhing, but this is normal because Soderbergh has to create that superficial side to Mike. But as the film progresses, it gets more serious and one doesn't hear the giggles and such anymore. The film starts 'growing up'. It starts going into the seedy part of this lifestyle with the alcohol, ecstasy- a drug, anonymous sex, emptiness, loneliness, etc.

This is a great film for teenagers 17 and above and ones in their 20's which are predominantly the ones that need to watch this, because even though the film may start out showing the fun part of this business, it suddenly takes a nose dive right down the toilet of life if you don't do something about it.

Out of 4 stars: 3.5                      Rated: R                        110min.