Summer steamrollers like "The Avengers" sometimes feel like cinematic
beat-downs. Good or bad, the mechanics of these big brawls can be numbingly
repetitious. Their vulnerable manflesh stuffed into kid costumes and muscle
suits, superheroes battle one another bloodlessly, bumping and grinding in the
service of saving the eternally imperiled world. Borrrrr-ing! For an
antidote and a really good time, go see "Magic Mike," Steven Soderbergh's funny, exhilarating,
down-and-dirty celebration of a different breed of costumed superstud -- and a
much earthier brand of bumping and grinding.
Soderbergh's footloose movie about Tampa hunks who strip for a living is no
"Nashville," but this director shares Robert Altman's eagle eye for the idiosyncrasies
of folks who populate a show-biz subculture, as well as his ability to riff on
rhythms of half-heard, possibly improvised conversation among guys who share a
trade, however infra dig. Drawn from Channing Tatum's own stint as a
stripper back in the day, the script -- by first-timer Reid Carolin, the actor's
producing partner -- doesn't aim for big narrative fireworks. The story flows
the way life does when you mostly live at night: working up a head of steam
onstage, stoned, sleeping around with strangers, your days slipping by in a
hangover haze.
The movie's mornings-after and afternoon delights are drenched in bruised,
golden-dirty Florida sunshine. That exquisitely decaying light can wear its
denizens down, but it's also energizing, a real turn-on. "Magic Mike" catches
that alternating beat in hot bursts of physicality and dreamy, drug-fueled
languors. A slow-simmering love affair between Tatum and quirky charmer Jody
Horn warms up during walks in the sun. As disengaged as a pleasant, vagrant
breeze, Soderbergh's camera drifts around their conversations: casual,
intermittent, sometimes inaudible, punctuated by laughter. Nothing's nailed down
in Tampa's fluid light; Soderbergh's taking moving pictures of the flux and flow
of human experience. (The director shot and edited, under his usual aliases.)
A lot of that flux and flow -- along with performances of astounding
flexibility -- occurs in the Xquisite strip club owned by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), a peacockin' cowboy in black
leather. Spoofing his own studly rep while milking it for every last drop of
sexual charisma, McConaughey owns the screen. Flamboyantly venal, Dallas wraps
his big-cat purr around anything that moves. After finally(!) shedding all his
cowboy gear toward the end of the movie, his sweaty, lubricious glee -- "Dallas
be ridin' again!" -- is flat-out irresistible.
Club headliner is Tatum's Magic Mike, a supple jack-of-all-trades onstage and
off. It's during one of his several day jobs that Mike "adopts" Alex Pettyfer's feckless Adam, who
stumbles out onstage a klutzy virgin in black socks and baggy underpants, but
comes off a big hit. As a hollow man instantly -- and fatally -- addicted to the
adrenalin rush of women and money, Pettyfer's perfect. Xquisite's beefcake
roster also includes Matthew Bomer ("White Collar"), Adam Rodriguez ("CSI: Miami"), WWE vet Kevin Nash
and, most notably, "True Blood"'s Joe Manganiello as Big Dick Richie.
More benign than "Boogie Nights," "Magic Mike" never lays a bad rap
on the stripper lifestyle. Instead, the movie mines the funny out of what could
be dissed as sad and sleazy. Gotta love it when, following newbie Adam's
backstage hazing, the grizzled old man of the clan rumbles wisely, "It's an
initiation ... like 'Lord of the Flies.'" And it's a hoot to watch Sookie's
favorite werewolf mend his best thong on a sewing machine, or the onetime "Lincoln Lawyer" lead in short shorts and
midriff-baring T-shirt, showing Adam how to shed clothes conbrio.
But it's Tatum's show. I've dissed "Step Up"'s hoofer and Nicolas Sparks' go-to sad
sack ("Dear John," "The Vow") as an affectless hunk bereft of smarts
or cool. But color me wrong. Playing Magic Mike, a good-looking, half-bright guy
who aspires to something more than aging into a "40-year-old stripper," Tatum
looks like a natural-born star. Not only can he deftly segue from comedy into
drama, the boy's hot as hell as a stripper, strutting his stuff in trench coat,
sweatsuit, marine camo, and especially draped in black shreds, a steampunk
mutant channeling Fosse and hip-hop. (Choreography's by Alison Faulk, and the
high-energy dance routines are terrific, cheesy but cherce.)
The big brawls I referenced earlier feature flesh-and-blood men gracelessly
cocooned in superhero gear. In contrast, "Magic Mike"'s physicality, the power
of real bodies in fierce motion, generates not only sexual heat but lizard-brain
exhilaration. Flesh that moves ecstatically defies the stasis of death. The
strippers on Dallas' stage are "c----rocking kings" because their moves (and
Soderbergh's only apparently loosey-goosey movie) celebrate being alive in our
human skins. Even stripping down on ladies' night taps into the power of kinesis
to sex up any empty space, whether theater or gymnasium, with beauty and form
and significance. Soderbergh gets that, and truth be told, so does the star of
"Magic Mike."
Kat Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a
book-length comparison of Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow
travelers in fiction (Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool."). She's reviewed
movies in newspapers and magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice,
Film West, Steadycam) and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her
writing has been included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of
the West," "Best American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career,
Kat's done everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon,
Harrison Ford, et al., to researching torture-porn movies for a law firm. She
adores Bigelow, Breillat and Denis -- and arguing about movies in any and all
arenas.
Summer steamrollers like "The Avengers" sometimes feel like cinematic
beat-downs. Good or bad, the mechanics of these big brawls can be numbingly
repetitious. Their vulnerable manflesh stuffed into kid costumes and muscle
suits, superheroes battle one another bloodlessly, bumping and grinding in the
service of saving the eternally imperiled world. Borrrrr-ing! For an
antidote and a really good time, go see "Magic Mike," Steven Soderbergh's funny, exhilarating,
down-and-dirty celebration of a different breed of costumed superstud -- and a
much earthier brand of bumping and grinding.
Soderbergh's footloose movie about Tampa hunks who strip for a living is no
"Nashville," but this director shares Robert Altman's eagle eye for the idiosyncrasies
of folks who populate a show-biz subculture, as well as his ability to riff on
rhythms of half-heard, possibly improvised conversation among guys who share a
trade, however infra dig. Drawn from Channing Tatum's own stint as a
stripper back in the day, the script -- by first-timer Reid Carolin, the actor's
producing partner -- doesn't aim for big narrative fireworks. The story flows
the way life does when you mostly live at night: working up a head of steam
onstage, stoned, sleeping around with strangers, your days slipping by in a
hangover haze.
The movie's mornings-after and afternoon delights are drenched in bruised,
golden-dirty Florida sunshine. That exquisitely decaying light can wear its
denizens down, but it's also energizing, a real turn-on. "Magic Mike" catches
that alternating beat in hot bursts of physicality and dreamy, drug-fueled
languors. A slow-simmering love affair between Tatum and quirky charmer Jody
Horn warms up during walks in the sun. As disengaged as a pleasant, vagrant
breeze, Soderbergh's camera drifts around their conversations: casual,
intermittent, sometimes inaudible, punctuated by laughter. Nothing's nailed down
in Tampa's fluid light; Soderbergh's taking moving pictures of the flux and flow
of human experience. (The director shot and edited, under his usual aliases.)
A lot of that flux and flow -- along with performances of astounding
flexibility -- occurs in the Xquisite strip club owned by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), a peacockin' cowboy in black
leather. Spoofing his own studly rep while milking it for every last drop of
sexual charisma, McConaughey owns the screen. Flamboyantly venal, Dallas wraps
his big-cat purr around anything that moves. After finally(!) shedding all his
cowboy gear toward the end of the movie, his sweaty, lubricious glee -- "Dallas
be ridin' again!" -- is flat-out irresistible.
Club headliner is Tatum's Magic Mike, a supple jack-of-all-trades onstage and
off. It's during one of his several day jobs that Mike "adopts" Alex Pettyfer's feckless Adam, who
stumbles out onstage a klutzy virgin in black socks and baggy underpants, but
comes off a big hit. As a hollow man instantly -- and fatally -- addicted to the
adrenalin rush of women and money, Pettyfer's perfect. Xquisite's beefcake
roster also includes Matthew Bomer ("White Collar"), Adam Rodriguez ("CSI: Miami"), WWE vet Kevin Nash
and, most notably, "True Blood"'s Joe Manganiello as Big Dick Richie.
More benign than "Boogie Nights," "Magic Mike" never lays a bad rap
on the stripper lifestyle. Instead, the movie mines the funny out of what could
be dissed as sad and sleazy. Gotta love it when, following newbie Adam's
backstage hazing, the grizzled old man of the clan rumbles wisely, "It's an
initiation ... like 'Lord of the Flies.'" And it's a hoot to watch Sookie's
favorite werewolf mend his best thong on a sewing machine, or the onetime "Lincoln Lawyer" lead in short shorts and
midriff-baring T-shirt, showing Adam how to shed clothes conbrio.
But it's Tatum's show. I've dissed "Step Up"'s hoofer and Nicolas Sparks' go-to sad
sack ("Dear John," "The Vow") as an affectless hunk bereft of smarts
or cool. But color me wrong. Playing Magic Mike, a good-looking, half-bright guy
who aspires to something more than aging into a "40-year-old stripper," Tatum
looks like a natural-born star. Not only can he deftly segue from comedy into
drama, the boy's hot as hell as a stripper, strutting his stuff in trench coat,
sweatsuit, marine camo, and especially draped in black shreds, a steampunk
mutant channeling Fosse and hip-hop. (Choreography's by Alison Faulk, and the
high-energy dance routines are terrific, cheesy but cherce.)
The big brawls I referenced earlier feature flesh-and-blood men gracelessly
cocooned in superhero gear. In contrast, "Magic Mike"'s physicality, the power
of real bodies in fierce motion, generates not only sexual heat but lizard-brain
exhilaration. Flesh that moves ecstatically defies the stasis of death. The
strippers on Dallas' stage are "c----rocking kings" because their moves (and
Soderbergh's only apparently loosey-goosey movie) celebrate being alive in our
human skins. Even stripping down on ladies' night taps into the power of kinesis
to sex up any empty space, whether theater or gymnasium, with beauty and form
and significance. Soderbergh gets that, and truth be told, so does the star of
"Magic Mike."
Kat Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a
book-length comparison of Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow
travelers in fiction (Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool."). She's reviewed
movies in newspapers and magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice,
Film West, Steadycam) and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her
writing has been included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of
the West," "Best American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career,
Kat's done everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon,
Harrison Ford, et al., to researching torture-porn movies for a law firm. She
adores Bigelow, Breillat and Denis -- and arguing about movies in any and all
arenas.
