Review: Magic Mike XXL

The first Magic Mike was a bit of a surprise. While it was obviously all about very in shape men dancing mostly naked Steven Soderbergh actually brought a little charm to it. The almost ad-libbed feeling the screenplay had worked wonders for Channing Tatum’s charm, and it turns out Soderbergh can direct some dance sequences. The film went from dumb to fun surprisingly quickly.

Of course no one went to see it for that, but it helped that it didn’t actually suck. We (men and women alike, though mostly women) went to see Magic Mike because… dear god, those abs. And Magic Mike XXL knows that, and so all the “story” is thrown out the window in favor of a road trip plot that simply gets us from one strip sequence to another. In short, it’s what you wanted, but that doesn’t mean it’s as good.

Magic Mike
Director: Gregory Jacobs
Rated: R
Release Date: June 25, 2015 

You know how Magic Mike (Channing Tatum) got out of the grind (pun intended) and left to start his own furniture business at the end of the first film? Well, screw that. He’s back. When the guys — Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello), Tarzan (Kevin Nash), Ken (Matt Bomer) and Tito (Adam Rodriguez) — show up in town on their way to a stripper convention Mike drops everything and joins them for one last ride. It seems that Dallas abandoned them so the group is breaking up, but not before one big fun trip to the biggest stripping event in Florida (a state I assume has a lot of stripping events). Plot kind of ensues and along the way the pick up an MC, Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith), hook up with Andie McDowell and see Michael Strahan perform a ridiculous strip.

Who really cares, though. The point of this movie was clearly to push the mostly naked men and forget about the rest. The screenplay is paper thin and mostly consists of the gang of guys shooting the shit, which, in all fairness, is actually kind of entertaining. They’re clearly ad-libbing a bunch and it lends some charm to a story that’s non-existent. It also keeps you in on the joke so you don’t have to care quite as much. Everyone seems to know why they’re there and they’re just having fun doing it.

Unfortunately director Gregory Jacobs didn’t get the fun memo and shoots the film like he’s directing an art piece. He’s trying to do his best replication of Soderbergh’s direction from the original that he can, but it isn’t the time or place and he doesn’t have the skill. The strip numbers are a mess, sadly destroying a lot of the fantastic dancing pulled off by Tatum and his cohorts. The grand finale of abs, pecs and banana hammocks feels flat thanks to Jacobs’ inability to build momentum or hold a scene together. What should be a bunch of fun starts feeling dragged out and sloppy. 

Thankfully he can’t crush the cast with his directing. Tatum is as Tatum does. The guy just oozes screen appeal and has actually pulled himself into a credible actor. Meanwhile Donald Glover joins the crew and delivers fantastically, though we never get the full abs show for him. The biggest surprise (pun still intended) is Manganiello) who takes a much larger role in the film and delivers wonderfully. Even Kevin Nash gets to talk a bit more this time around, which was nice of the filmmakers to do. 

Sadly, the “road trip but with strippers” plot isn’t enough to hold up the film from strip scene to strip scene, especially with the lackluster direction for those scenes. The guy’s repartee may be fun, but everything else drags. There’s attempted plot lines about love and life and moving on from stripping, but nothing ever clicks in any meaningful way. You get the feeling they’re just saying this stuff because they had to put some more words into the screenplay. Every scene without men taking their clothes off feels wasted, except for Andie McDowell’s cameo, which is fantastically dirty and fun. 

That’s really what you’re going to see Magic Mike XXL for anyway so why care about all the rest? It is the equivalent of a Cinemax movie geared entirely towards showing mostly naked women off and it does that… except with men. If you want abs, strippers, thrusting loins and more dollar bills than you’ve ever seen before in a movie then Magic Mike XXL delivers. It’s just too bad it couldn’t deliver the entire package (pun totally intended).