Film review: Magic Mike XXL

Dir: Gregory Jacobs

With: Channing Tatum, Joe Mangeniello, Matt Bomer

Runtime: 115 minutes

THOUGH the history of male stripper movies is about as short as a gladiator kilt, the original Magic Mike was a sly, delightful, mildly subversive surprise, a rabbit out the hat kind of picture from indie emperor Steven Soderbergh. Gregory Jacobs' follow up, in contrast, is more of a Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee affair. You might like it, but probably not a lot, or at least not as much as the first.

The story opens three years after the magical Mike of the title (Channing Tatum, also a producer) gave away his last posing pouch to the charity shop, or wherever it is the old costumes of male strippers go to die. Mike now designs and makes furniture, but as we see from one late night session at the workbench, he has not quite said goodbye in his heart to the stripping game. When an old tune comes on the radio he flips down his welder's mask and starts shaking his moneymaker as in days of yore. Alas, the song on the wireless is not Flashdance.

Though his business is just starting to take off, Mike decides what he really needs in his life is to rejoin the Kings of Tampa, his old troupe, and go to a strippers convention in Florida with them for one last hurrah. One notable absence in the ranks is Dallas, the former leader, as played by Matthew McConaughey, who went on to do other stuff such as winning an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club.

Also MIA, at least from the director's chair, is Soderbergh, who is credited as an executive producer, cinematographer and editor. In consequence, while the film duly looks the part, it lacks that all important something that separates the novel from the pedestrian. Without that, the sight of men taking their clothes off is really rather dull. Certainly, Jacobs's film supplies lots in the way of pounding hip hop music, silly costumes, sly asides, and some ironic moments, but when you get right down to the bump and grind of it, all that simulated sex is about as erotic as regrouting the bathroom.

Although one suspects more than a few fans of the franchise would be happy if the film was 115 minutes of back to back dance routines, there has to be some pretence made at a story. It's not much of a pretence, but it's there. So it is that the screenplay by Reid Carolin (who wrote the first film) has the Kings of Tampa leaving the road to visit a club run by an ex of Mike (Jada Pinkett Smith) who agrees to MC for them at the convention, and a party of tipsy, middle-aged women, led by Andie MacDowell, who are dissatisfied with their marriages and just want to be understood. Never let it be said Magic Mike does not know its target audience. Otherwise, the guys yammer away to each other endlessly about their plans for the future. Yawn.

When it has a giggle at male stripping, much like the female audiences who throw dollar bills at the performers, Jacobs' picture has an easy-osey charm. As for Tatum, the star of 21 Jump Street and Foxcatcher has more charisma in his right earlobe than some actors do in their entire bodies, and watching him shoot the breeze with his brothers-in-thongs, or shake his groove thing to a disco beat, is not exactly painful viewing.

What is mildly agonising, like getting a stray sequin in the eye, is realising how quickly the original Magic Mike concept has dated. While hardly at the level of dad-dancing, it is not far off. Then there is what the film has to say about what women want. Or what it thinks they want. You see, what Mike and company truly care about, apart from the money, is putting smiles on the faces of women, and if that means G-strings, baby oil and being objectified, well then, a man's gotta do. Frankly my dears, the same effect could be achieved by putting the bins out. Less chafing involved too.