We’ve written a fair amount about this year’s mainstream erotic cinema thus far, including 50 Shades Of Grey and The Boy Next Door and we realize that not all of our readers aren’t necessarily the target audience for Magic Mike XXL. There’s also a surprising stand-out turn from Community‘s Donald Glover as a character who would have fit right into the first film as an aspiring musician who moonlights as a performer at Rome’s club, but he too has a great monologue that chimes more with the sequel’s position about how making people happy is its own reward. The returning male cast give hugely athletic and likeable performances throughout dance scenes and bro-downs alike, with Tatum pulling off the most impressive moves and Manganiello stealing most of the funnier scenes. Jada Pinkett Smith is on fire as Rome, the MC of an exclusive club where she praises the female clientèle as queens, and Andie McDowell makes a surprisingly ribald appearance as a divorced southern belle who wants to get back in the saddle and brings a particularly ludicrous sub-plot to its climax in the process. Zoe gets short shrift compared to Cody Horn’s Brooke, who served as Mike’s previous love interest, but the other new female characters measure up better. Just in case every subsequent scene of female-focused performance doesn’t hammer the point home, it’s firmly underlined by another line later on when Mike drops the line “My God is a she” into conversation with fellow traveler Zoe (Amber Heard). The film wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test, but it’s the ultimate proof of why that oft-cited mantra isn’t a box-ticking measure of what makes a film’s gender politics good or bad.
The tone of the whole film is emphatically set by the following scene, in which Richie is challenged to make a grumpy convenience store clerk smile with a drug-fuelled impromptu performance that stands as the most hysterical sequence of the film. When the gang set off, sans Matthew McConaughey’s MC Dallas, Mike suggests that if they’re doing this again, they should do it their own way – none of the Kings can fathom why pyrophobic Richie would continue to stick to his fireman act so stubbornly. It’s giving the audience what they want and its characters are held to the same standard.
But Magic Mikewas marketed as a lighter and funnier film than it turned out to be and XXLisn’t just baiting the hook again. The flimsy plot set-up also has some similarities with this summer’s Pitch Perfect 2, (and even cements Elizabeth Banks as the gatekeeper of Hollywood’s most unlikely national conventions in a similar role) but there’s no competition to be won, or even any pressing need for the characters to get back into stripping.Īs a result, the film has a loose and episodic road trip structure, in keeping with the lighter and funnier approach. Soderbergh, who has retired from directing since the first film, returns as editor and cinematographer (under a pseudonym) for now director Gregory Jacobs and brings the experience of last time with him as the choreography and staging become ever more elaborate and impressive. The stage sequences are stepped up considerably too, as you might expect from the size label in the title.
It’s a far cry from the recession-era character study of the first film, which has been tossed aside like so much surplus clothing in favour of making this an outright comedy. Mike eagerly joins them as they pile into a food truck and set off, with work phones and old costumes literally going out of the window as they resolve to freshen up their act for one final fling. Nevertheless, the former Kings of Tampa – Big Dick Richie, (Joe Manganiello) Ken, (Matt Bomer) Tarzan (Kevin Nash) and Tito (Adam Rodriguez)- come calling as they’re about to head on a road trip from Florida to South Carolina, planning their final show as a group at a prestigious convention.
0 kommentar(er)
