I found Magic Mike to be very interesting, mainly because of the way it was told. In most movies, we meet the hero as he’s starting off on a new adventure that takes him from the world he knows to a new and fantastic place. Think Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or Daniel in The Karate Kid.
However, in Magic Mike the main protagonist isn’t the guy new on the scene. If it was, the movie would be called Magic Adam. Magic Mike follows the story of Mike, the top male stripper in Tampa. Having Mike be the central character of the story felt like watching Star Wars if Ben Kenobi was the focus of the film.
I think this shift in focus is what makes Magic Mike so interesting. We’re not watching a guy at the top of his game be usurped by the new kid on the block. Mike discovers Adam, but at no point does it seem like Adam is going to overtake Mike. Hell, if it weren’t for Mike’s generosity and sense of friendship, Adam wouldn’t even be alive by the end of the film. Side note: who carries around $10,000 in drugs on them? Adam’s an idiot.
Seriously, Adam might be one of the most boneheaded characters in all of cinema. He combined his dumbassness with being fairly unlikable. He went from being a fuck up with no prospects to a fuck up with a drug problem and poor spending habits. Any time he got punched, I took a bit of schadenfreude-like glee from it.
Matthew McConaughey is amazing as Dallas.
I liked that Mike wasn’t just a meat head. He has a dream, to open up his own custom furniture business, but he doesn’t have the means to make it a reality. Dallas, played expertly by Matthew McConaughey, promises Mike equity once they move to a bigger and better club in Miami, but Mike’s not getting any younger, and the male stripper game definitely have a cut-off date, age wise. Then again, try telling that Kevin Nash’s character, Tarzan.
It fun seeing Kevin Nash in this movie, only because I didn’t know Kevin Nash acted. Not that Kevin Nash does much acting in this movie. He spends most of his non-dancing time passed out or squinting at someone. But while he didn’t have many lines, he was involved in one of the funniest parts of the movie, when the guys haze Adam on his first night in the club.
If there’s a weak link in this movie, it’s Adam’s sister and Mike love interest, Brooke, played by Cody Horn. I felt like the filmmakers couldn’t afford Anna Kendrick and that Julia Stiles turned them down. Her performance was often wooden. She didn’t show that spark that would have given her character a bit of life.
Your girlfriend has probably already seen Magic Mike at least once, and has probably raved about it to you. I can understand your hesitation at taking her recommendation for a movie featuring bare-assed ripped guys with a grain of salt, but that would be a mistake. Underneath the six pack abs and man-thongs is a movie with heart told from an unconventional point of view. Magic Mike is definitely worth watching.
Did I forget to mention that a topless Olivia Munn is in Magic Mike?
, with its ninjas swinging from mountaintops, I thought “Man, this looks awesome,” immediately followed by “Man, I bet this is going to suck.” It’s a lesson that has been beaten into me by the previous GI Joe movie, the Transformers franchise. There are enough cool looking action scenes to cobble together a trailer that makes me want to see what ends up being a tremendously awful movie.
