Well...I thought I was in for a night of naked dancing men. Unfortunately, my night was less like a bachelorette party and more like...a...kind of lame...night at the movies. Why wasn't there more shirtless dancing?? The trailer for this movie was very misleading, in my opinion. Based on the trailer, I thought this was going to be another Sex and the City type movie - high energy, stupid jokes, fun, loud top 40's music, hot men to oogle at with your girlfriends or gayfriends. This is not typically my scene, but I thought, heck, sounds kind of fun, right?
Well...it wasn't that fun. First of all, the dance scenes were few and far between, and those sequences, in my opinion, were the only redeeming quality of the film. Channing Tatum is a really great dancer. The way he moves his body is definitely sexy and kind of mind boggling. Watching the men dance was fun and embarassing and induced crowd participation. I also liked that men were the sexual objects in this movie, which basically never happens in most blockbusters.
Other than that, boy did I have a lot of problems with this movie. 1) Whose story was this? It starts out with Channing Tatum's character, but then soon enough we meet Alex Pettyfer (hello cutie!). His story, to me, was more captivating than Channing's: a struggling teen trying to earn a living who turns to stripping and gets sucked into a life of partying and drugs. But we follow both of them back and forth, which prevents me from empathizing with either one.
We are also introduced to Channing's love interest, played by Cody Horn. It was just too predictable. We knew she'd reject his stripper life-style, but end up allured by his dance moves and charm, and then fall for him. And this happened, but in an almost too-subtle way. I didn't get who her character was at all. She wasn't straight edge enough, she didn't reject the scene enough. She has tattoos (suggesting a freer spirit?) and goes to the club and takes Channing up on most of his invitations. It was just too easy to seduce her. Also, the interactions between Channing and Cody seemed almost entirely improvised, which made their characters hard to understand. It just seemed like incoherent, inconsequential babble to me.
The story also lacked basic plot structure. Events just sort of unfolded with no guidance or direction, and it ended the same way. I left the movie theatre thinking: what just happened and to whom? And why wasn't there more hot shirtless men dancing!? That's what I was promised!
I was mostly dissappointed, because I think the premise is very interesting, especially since it's based on a true story. I thought the film should have gone strongly in one direction. Either it should have been a fun, light-hearted movie or it should have been a drama about the hardship and turmoil of trying to earn money, find a life-path, etc. But instead it was this weird amalgam of the two, leading me to feel nothing for any of the characters, and feel confused about what I was watching.
I would have liked to know the real story, and seen clearer character arcs and truer emotions. I don't recommend this movie, although I must say, out of the seven people (men and women) I saw this flick with, I was the only one who disliked it...so...do as you will.
Learn more about Magic Mike here: http://magicmikemovie.warnerbros.com/
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