'Mike' Men
It looks like the feel good movie of the year may be the one about built guys grinding on excited women. Who would’ve thought? See the critics love for Magic Mike below.
“The hip-pumping studs who work at the Xquisite dance club know a thing or two about making the ladies scream in delight. But nobody works the crowd like Magic Mike (a terrific Channing Tatum), the gyrating main attraction in Steven Soderbergh’s funny, enjoyable romp about male strippers and the American dream. Then again, few directors can sell the goods — whether it’s Che in Cuba or Mike in a thong — as shrewdly as Mr. Soderbergh. A restive talent who toggles between big-studio and low-budget work, he has a genius for wrapping tricky ideas, like capitalism and its discontents, into commercial packages. Never before has he put them into cheek-baring chaps.” – NY Times
“Directing in his clear-eyed, tartly deadpan style, Soderbergh regards Mike with a juicy blend of amusement and compassion. Bit by bit, the film adds up his life, from his sex-as-sport relationship with a psychology student (Olivia Munn) who shares his taste for threesomes to his spiky is it a romance? with Adam’s sister (Cody Horn) to his complex bond with Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), the drawling stripper who owns the club. In a brilliant turn, McConaughey plays Dallas as a father figure, trainer-coach, and shady businessman who always keeps his real agenda out of sight. He’s trying to set up a club in Miami, and though he has promised Mike equity, each time he talks about it there’s a whiff of exploitation in the air. Magic Mike has a conventional structure, yet a teasing question percolates beneath: If selling yourself is as much fun as this movie makes it look, what could be wrong with it? The answer is that once you’ve sold yourself, losing yourself may not be far behind.” – EW
“In Magic Mike, Channing Tatum’s pre-Hollywood experience as a male stripper has inspired not only one of his better roles but also arguably the raunchiest, funniest and most enjoyably nonjudgmental American movie about selling sex since Boogie Nights, its obvious if considerably darker precursor. Delivering what feels like a young director’s work and not that of a guy nudging 50, Steven Soderbergh taps into the jazzy erotic energy that put him on the map more than 20 years ago with Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” – THR
“First (because we know it’s on your mind): The Channing Tatum male-stripper movie is filled with male stripping. Tons of it. With the exception of one backstage shocker of a close-up, you don’t get the full monty—but maybe something even better. These choreographed dance numbers, set to pumping remixes of “Like a Virgin” and, unavoidably, “It’s Raining Men,” are hilariously unsubtle. Never is an opportunity lost for an assless-chapped cowboy or a trench-crawling soldier to perform a crotch thrust; pants are removed with a magician’s bold flourish. For these sequences alone, Magic Mike connects on a screamingly funny level, and not just for wayward bachelorettes.” – Time Out
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“But Soderbergh works in layers, allowing us to choose our fantasy. Most obviously, we’ve got a story about guys living the dream: days free, nights filled with cash, women and any drug desired. On the flip side, it’s a tale of stunted aspiration, of the physical and emotional costs of the daily grind — especially when grinding daily is how you choose to pay the bills. The carefully choreographed show scenes make clear that Soderbergh is interested in the work itself. And he deftly captures the vibe of a club that runs on screaming women and preening boy toys. Even so, he never underestimates the price of objectification — or the shadier aspects of Gulf Coast life.” – NYDN
