There’s no beef about Tatum’s talents now
Magic Mike XXL
15 Cert, 115 min
★★★★ ★
Dir Gregory Jacobs Starring Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Adam Rodriguez, Kevin Nash, Gabriel Iglesias, Amber Heard, Andie MacDowell, Jada Pinkett Smith, Elizabeth Banks
If you’ve seen the trailer for Magic Mike XXL, the, um, augmented sequel to 2012’s male-stripping portrait Magic Mike, you’ll know the scene when Channing Tatum’s Mike Lane gets back into the game. Mike is in his furniture-design workshop, clad in a welding mask, when Ginuwine’s 1996 R&B smash Pony comes on the stereo. He pauses, face obscured, and gives the camera a look, as if the audience are to blame for nudging him back so sneakily into the male-entertainment profession. As Tatum starts to twitch his hips to the bass, and gyrate to it, and then jump around the room, we watch him bust out a set of moves that are beyond ridiculous. It’s one of the wildest physical set pieces a star has ever tried in movies. And it’s all Tatum, no trickery.
Magic XXL, though shot and edited again by Steven Soderbergh, is directed by the first film’s producer, Gregory Jacobs. It’s an ensemble movie at heart, as the first one was, too. But when Tatum’s doing his routines, it’s entirely about him, and starts to become virtually a shrine to his big cat’s muscular control – a shrine with scented candles lit all over.
It’s embarrassing to think how ready we all were to write the guy off in his early vehicles, even when he was flaunting some of this sure-footed prowess in 2006’s Step Up. But his acting has improved a hundredfold, and building a franchise around him – without digital effects, stunt doubles, or anything exploding other than cans of whipped cream – makes all the sense in the world.
Mike’s old crew, the Kings of Tampa, are in tatters. The first film’s Matthew McConaughey character has absconded with “the kid”, Alex Pettyfer, to set up a new show. The rest, including “Big Dick” Richie (a heroic Joe Manganiello), faddish spiritualist Ken (Matt Bomer) and Latin lover Tito (Adam Rodriguez), are a fraying bunch with overfed biceps and beefed-up roles; almost all whoop to get Mike back on the bus, as they head for a stripping convention. Cleaving hard to its road-trip formula, XXL works out less of an honest-to-goodness plot than Magic Mike, but goes even beyond that wonderfully loose, dexterous movie in feeling sexually liberated. It’s more glammedup, rising above any element of tawdry exploitation, and is more of an outright comedy. The bonds between the performers give it the soap-operatic feel of an XY-chromosome Steel Magnolias. It may be the gayest straight film, or the straightest gay one. And it doesn’t care either way.