Magic Mike has everything Striptease does not: male nudity, female nudity, a script, good acting, and Steven Soderbergh. Many people will cite one of these reasons as the reason they saw Magic Mike. For me, the big sell was the last one. Soderbergh is very good at exploring the characters and the world they inhabit. In this case, the character is Magic Mike (Channing Tatum) and the world is Xquisite, a male strip club in Tampa.
Adam (Alex Pettyfer) is in a rut. He’s dropped out of college, crashing with his sister Brooke (Cody Horn), and working dead end jobs. At one construction job, he meets Mike (Tatum), who shows him the wonderful world of Xquisite, including Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), the club owner, who promises Adam girls, fame, and potentially a trip to Miami when they expand. Mike takes Adam under his wing, which complicates his “magical” life as he tries to watch Adam, develop a relationship with Brooke, and launch his custom furniture business.
Pipe dreams are at the core of Magic Mike. Each character has dreams they think they can fulfill with their current life trajectory; however, the dreams fall more into the realm of fantasy, like their club. Mike wants his furniture business, but can’t get a loan; Adam wants to party all the time, but lacks self-awareness with his actions; and the members of Xquisite want to get to Miami, but Dallas keeps that just out of their reach. Brooke is necessary to the story because she provides the audience’s view into this unique world, and she is the rational dreamer that the characters lives revolve around.
Soderbergh’s greatest strength here is his creation of the world of male stripping. The audience gets a glimpse behind the glamour of the stage, where their world is not unlike the world of a ballerina or thespian. The dance routines are planned out, sometimes in a very funny way, and shockingly well executed (remember, Channing Tatum got his early start on Step Up and as a former male stripper). This movie could have been done as a dance movie, and it could have been just as effective as the version seen. Most importantly, off the stage, you get to see how the strippers could keep coming back to Xquisite: their lives are much more boring and mundane, and sometimes just sad.
Soderbergh’s sets and locations are very cleverly filmed, sometimes too clever with some of the shots of characters driving. The beach scenes had lighting schemes I have not seen before, and Xquisite walks the fine line between cheesy and accurate. Soderbergh has a great shot showing how the line outside the club does not match the state of the billboard showing off the club, meaning things are not always as they seem.
Channing Tatum is a producer on this movie as well as the lead actor since this project is loosely based on his life experiences. As a result, he anchors this movie with a surprisingly nuanced performance. His stage persona is just as flashy and charismatic as some of the dancers can be. Outside of the stage he tries to use that charisma in the real world, with more limited success as more people know his backstory. We can feel his frustration with the bankers who know why he cannot receive a loan, and his relationship with Brooke reeks of honesty. Cody Horn does a good job of playing off Tatum, though she can be a bit shrill at times. Unfortunately, Alex Pettyfer looks like he is asleep the whole time. Perhaps while studying for his role, he partied too hard and needed his scenes for much needed relaxation. The real winner is Matthew McConaughey, whose Dallas is a character he understands and completely nails. McConaughey is very good at playing a character that is equal parts narcissistic and sleezy, and in this case, he threw in some decent dancing as well. It’s almost as if his Dazed and Confused character realized he could make a living being himself at a strip club.
Magic Mike has all the makings of being the butt of a joke. Instead, it’s just a but with one t. It may be a movie with abs, penises, dancing, drugs, and boobs, but it also is a story about love, growing up, and empty promises. Thanks to Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, and Steven Soderbergh, the world of male stripping can now be properly understood by the world at large, but it still shows us plenty of butts in the process.