So I was dragged along to this movie by my mother and sisters last night for a “girls night”. It wasn’t one I’d have ever seen on my own, but I figured there might at least be some fun dance scenes or raunchy humor I could enjoy. Sadly, that was not to be the case.
It was horrible. Seriously, people, don’t waste your money. It has a complete lack of an interesting narrative and painfully undeveloped characters. While I was wondering ‘Who are these people?’ and ‘Why did he just do that?’ the movie simply answered with "Who cares, he’s naked!’) The female lead, who looked a bit like Julia Stiles’ second cousin, spent the whole movie looking like the guy next to her just farted.
Every attempt by the actors to look “sexy” was embarrassing and squirm-inducing. A greasy Matthew McConaughey grinding up on the disturbingly flat-headed The Kid from behind was not an image I needed in my head. The dances were uninteresting, the humor flat and labored. The dialogue meandered from pointless to trite to inane and back again, revealing nothing of any interest to anyone. Camera shots that were obviously going for edgy and fresh were simply discordant and unattractive.
There is one fuzzy extreme foreground shot and one silhouette shot where the dancer is behind a white screen. But nothing direct, from the front at least. There are plenty of ass shots.
My sister and I saw this opening day with a full house of enthusiastic watchers, at the 11:00am matinee showing. We went in with low expectations and weren’t badly disappointed. We liked the humor, especially when Big Dick Richie picked up an overweight female and got back spasms, when the original Tarzan couldn’t go on and the kid had to go on stage. I personally would have liked to see Joe Manginiello(sp) and Matt Bomer more, but I guess that would have interrupted the focus of the movie. Maybe there will be more material in the director’s cut in the DVD release?
Gay guy checking in - went to see it with my SO yesterday and, surprise surprise, we were the only two guys in the small audience. Note to hetero guys; good place to hang out when women exit the theater!
It was OK…sort of Showgirls with dudes.
Having been to a few Gay strip places in Manhattan where they really got down and dirty, these guys were lame…very much a dance troupe on America’s Got Talent with mild strip and little tease.
Despite general good reviews, I would give it a C- at best…story was boring and predictable from scene one, dancing was OK at best, none of the guys had any real chemistry on stage; they could just as easily have been doing the same dance moves for their buddies at a hip-hop club and nobody would have batted an eye in awe.
I suppose this might be considered raunchy and exciting if you are a single lady and go out with your girlfriends in the suburbs of Boise, Idaho to see it - but it was really nothing more than the usual cliche stripper(s) with the heart of gold story.
I went today with a group of mid-50s age women. We all liked it.
BUT.
There are a lot of butts. All I could think of was that scene in the movie Parenthood where the 3yr old appears in the doorway of his parents’ room clad in a cowboy hat, boots, gun belt and nothing else. Made me want to laugh, which I did on many occasions, more than fan myself. And the scenes where the male dancers are shoving their crotches into the women’s faces seemed like something designed to appeal more to gay audiences than female audiences. Not there’s anything wrong with that :p. Channing Tatum is fabulous, I’ll definitely go see him again. The other guys seemed to have gotten a paycheck for just showing up and taking their pants off, and a good deal of the movie seems—the part that told the actual story—seemed to have been left on the cutting room floor. (LOVED, and agreed with, the comment above that the “love” interest looked like she was smelling something bad. I think she was channeling Kristen Stewart.)
DMark, your review is accurate but unnecessarily bleak. How many male strip tease movies get released with as much notice as this one, where the men are actually good-looking(mostly), some recognizable actors, and a fairly coherent story? Maybe if you were a bit more encouraging, we might get a sequel and maybe other such movies will be made, a little bit better each time. I’m a middle aged female who was made very happy by this movie.
::d&r::
It was amusingly cheesy. The low point in the movie is amusingly the women- both of their acting abilities were terrible and that is not to mention the colored-hair girl and the touch-my-boobs girl. I went in not expecting too much- but I was certainly amused.
I really enjoyed The Girlfriend Experience and this one is similar- the real life repercussions of a career on the fringes of society.
Sorry you found my comments bleak, and you are preaching to the choir about having more films with male strippers (Gay guy here, remember?), but still - this was no better than Showgirls and not as good as the Cher film Burlesque. Both of those were campy, over-the-top weird fun. The Brit film The Full Monty was funnier and had far more heart to the story (check that out if you haven’t already seen it!)
Magic Mike could have been far better with more use of the subplots of the other guys on stage…Magic Mike wasn’t really all that magical; his dancing was good enough, he was nice enough, but he was pretty bland for a lead role/character. They could have spent a few minutes with the other dancers and shown their back story.
I am glad you liked it and sorry to rain on your parade, but for a film about male strippers, well, pardon the puns, the script lacked meat and fell short.
I know you’re right, DMark, I thought I was being funny by taking it so seriously, I agreed that I wanted to see more of Matt Bomer and Joe (I’m not even going to try to spell his name right) and their stories. If the bad language and the brief nude and semi-nude scenes were sliced out, it might have passed muster on the Lifetime Movie Channel. Just barely.
Nah, DMark’s review was right on. The movie wasn’t very good and the few strip scenes didn’t make up for some of the worst acting (Cody Horn and Olivia Munn, in my opinion). It was as if Steven Soderbergh thought his audience was women prisoners in a high security prison with no other options to ogle male strippers. I guess you’ll just have to lean forward, stiffen up a bit, and think of England. . .
There were WAAAAAY too many boobs. Like, 6 boobs. I’m not all “eew, naked women! Help me I’m straight!” but I wasn’t there to see boobs I wanted men skin! There are boobs in EVERY SINGLE MOVIE now - why this one too? There were also way too many shots of that Cody chick’s weird mouth. Just a lot of camera focusing on her.
I thought there was way too much talking, not enough dancing. And when they danced, too many clothes.
Matthew McConaughey pretty much played himself, don’t you think?
But, I didn’t have high expectations so whatever. I can’t even grade it, it was just something to stare at.
