The naked truths

Dir: Steven Soderbergh

With: Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn

Running time: 110 minutes

IN Magic Mike, a comedy drama set in the world of male stripping, one need only wait a minute or two before the first of many bare male bahookies parades across the screen. This sight is followed in due course by shots of oiled pecs, thrusting groins, and more leather chaps and chaps in leather than you'll find at an alternative rodeo.

Sounds like hen party heaven, a Full Monty for modern Noughties misses, a grand gay night out? Hold that thought for a moment. Anyone venturing into Magic Mike in search of nothing but trashy pleasures should first check out the name of the director of the piece – one Steven Soderbergh, esq.

This is the Soderbergh who divides his time between blockbusters and more art-house pieces, the director of both the glossy Oceans series with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and the two-part, four-hour-plus historical epic Che, with wall-to-wall beards and revolutionary politics.

Soderbergh is the original split-personality director, and in Magic Mike he brings together several competing impulses to make a picture that is all over the stage, but enjoyably so. Sleazy but nice, shallow as a puddle but deep in parts, this male buddy movie can be grotesquely funny and sometimes just plain grotesque.

In short, do expect a suitably saucy rendition of It's Raining Men, but stay tuned also for a considered musing on the role of modern man in a post-feminist, economically stagnant society. All that, plus Matthew McConaughey continuing the sterling run of form seen in The Lincoln Lawyer and Killer Joe, and Channing Tatum proving once again that brains can accompany brawn in an actor.

Tatum plays the Mike of the title. Mike is a man of many parts – construction worker and custom furniture-maker chief among them. Then there is his night job as a stripper at XQuisite, a male dance revue in Tampa, Florida. Mike sees himself as an entrepreneur, a classier form of hustler, only doing the sleazier stuff so that he can save enough money to make a go of furniture making. Not that he is suffering while he struggles. With a beachside house, plenty of cash coming in, and women throwing themselves at his feet like dollar bills, Mike is living what seems like an idyllic life.

Into this life wanders Adam (Alex Pettyfer) who had a scholarship to go to college but is now a casual labourer and crashing with Brooke, his nursing assistant sister (Cody Horn). Before you can say "mind that moral slippery slope, son" he has been introduced to club boss Dallas (McConaughey) and is taking off his clothes in the presence of women who are not medical personnel or his wife.

Soderbergh duly lets rip during the club scenes, with the troupe doing all the cliched routines and moves, dressing up as firemen, sailors, wild men of the jungle, and so on. (Ever noticed that no male stripper ever takes on the persona of a lusty accountant?) It's all hugely tacky and molto cheesy, but Soderbergh, ever the hipster, dilutes the sleaziness by overlaying the scenes with trendy music tracks. This being Florida, the sun is always shining in the daytime, making it seem as though everyone is on holiday from real life.

The first half is played strictly for laughs, with McConaughey especially drinking deep from the cup of parody. Clad in leather trousers, a cowboy hat and not much else, the well-oiled, ever thrusting McConaughey is about as sexy as a rainy Monday, but the joke is that he doesn't realise it.

Reid Carolin's script goes for laughs initially, then has ambitions to delve a little deeper. The film's conscience, its moral bellwether, is Brooke, a woman who can take the joke about male stripping but also considers it a life that can't be lived for long without paying some price.

From the very fine Gypsy and The Wrestler to the horribly bad Showgirls, the stripper's tale has been told in many a movie. Carolin puts a new spin on it by trading men for women, and putting women in the dominant position when it comes to relationships. Sometimes his points are made with an unnecessarily heavy hand, and at other times the film is having such a good comedic time everyone seems to have forgotten there is a dramatic story waiting to be resolved.

These competing strands, and the improvisational style of the dialogue, give Magic Mike the air of an indie film that has wandered into mainstream territory and doesn't quite know how to get home again.

Yet what makes Soderbergh's film chaotic also makes it interesting. McConaughey, Pettyfer and Tatum, a young actor who gets better with every movie (as long as he steers away from mush such as Dear John), are terrifically watchable, even if they are sometimes exposing more to the camera than their emotions.

FEATURE – PAGE 22