HUNKS ON A MISSION TO PLEASE
Stripper bros try a little tenderness in latest peek behind the stage curtain
MAGIC MIKE XXL
★★ ★ 1/2 Starring: Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Jada Pinkett Smith Directed by: Gregory Jacobs Duration: 115 minutes
During one of the bro-y heart-to-hearts that are actually quite common in Magic Mike XXL, new recruit Andre (Donald Glover) confesses to smiling doll Ken (Matt Bomer) that he might not give up male “entertaining” even if he didn’t need the money. These women, he explains, are escaping from a bunch of guys who don’t listen to them, and a world that doesn’t care about their opinion, to get full attention from a handsome guy who wants to be around them. “We’re, like, healers or something” he explains dreamily.
As with just about everything in this movie, it’s meant a bit tonguein-cheek, but still: Where the first in this surprising male stripper franchise had Mike (Channing Tatum) trying to gyrate his impressive body off the stage and into legitimate business, the XXL version is all about the palliative powers of these men in tight speedos. These hunks are on a mission from God (who’s a woman, as Mike cheerfully explains to one future customer), sent to ease the burden of being a modern woman, at best admired but never truly appreciated.
Take six abs, and don’t call them in the morning.
Some part of this is simple fan service — this movie could not be more appealing to women of a certain caste if Channing Tatum himself were on hand at every screening to give them a back rub and a Bacardi Breezer — but it’s also an interesting undercurrent of justification, or at least separation from the generally more troublesome world of men ogling plasticized women for money. The grand societal power dynamics are flipped: Potentially bedding Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello) is a battle cry for women everywhere, not just a mildly sleazy way to spend a lost weekend. Don’t identify as a feminist? Let’s see if a mittful of ones and a pelvis twitching in front of your face doesn’t convince you that sisters should be doing it for themselves (or at least having it done to them, for themselves).
Pulled back in for one last ride, Mike and his boys are on their way to the male entertainer convention, though the road trip is really an excuse to have the gang brightening the nights of one specific woman after another. What’s more impressive, excepting the all-you-can-eat-buffet of the finale, their devotion and exaltation is just as thorough with their shirts on.
In need of a new MC for the conference — Matthew McConaughey no longer works for small bills — Mike leads the gang to a Savannah sex palace run by Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith), his former boss. There’s some bad blood, but Mike buries the hatchet by busting out a classic routine that involves faux-humping two women at once, revealing himself as the rare man who can satisfy one women emotionally while taking care of two others physically. (Good luck trying that at home.)
There is some ample bro-bonding in between all this womenpleasing, though even it mostly just serves to remind how adorable and daffy these well-oiled pleasure machines really are. Even the spots of drug use here are just a fun little escape fantasy, a wacky road trip side adventure carrying none of the dark tinges they did in the first movie.
And that is basically XXL writ small: Where the first Magic Mike pulled back the curtain, this one stays firmly in the pit below the stage.
The road trip is an excuse to have the gang brightening the nights of one woman after another.