Magic Mike

After the disastrous results of Sexy Beast, where I bought the film based on the trailer before ever having seen it, I promised myself never to buy a film I hadn't seen again. I broke my promise this past weekend as I spent the Christmas money I was given on not one but two films I had not seen before.

Magic Mike one of the two films (the other being The Back Up Plan) was not as disastrous as Sexy Beast but I don't know if it was good enough to buy. My consolation is that the price of buying the DVD which I get to keep forever was the same price as buying a one-time theater ticket. Unfortunately, I fear, much like Sexy Beast that the best parts of Magic Mike were in the trailer.

The film was not what I was expecting and it felt like two different films were trying to be put together. It was both slow and fast and grainy and smooth. I felt like the film struggled with putting a story together around male strippers which had successfully been done with The Full Monty. The Full Monty may have been missing the eye candy and dance moves that Magic Mike had but it had a good story that kept you interested the entire film. Magic Mike on the other hand felt more like the filmmakers were obsessed with the idea of making a film about male strippers but did not know how to put it together. Steven Soderbergh's films for me are a mixed bag - you have the good ones like The Ocean Films and Erin Brockovitch and then you have the bad ones like Traffic and Solaris. Magic Mike is kind of a mix of both the good and the bad.

The dance scenes where obviously the best parts of the movie and was really the selling point of the film, however, the dance scenes were few and far between as the film focused more on the lifestyle outside the club. Drugs, drinking and women all done with no soundtrack which was highly unnerving. The lack of soundtrack I think was the main detracting point. The film was quite boring at these points and as an audience you were not invested in the plot at all. You knew from that start that the money Mike had saved would be used to bail the brother out somehow allowing Mike to get with the sister and that Mike would break from the club. I wanted to break away from these nitty gritty moments of reality and retreat to the dance scenes which were highly stylized, at least compared with the rest of the film. There was lights, music and lets face it, lots of eye candy. Although I saw way more of Matthew McConaughey then I ever bargained for.

Overall Magic Mike was a disappointment. The dancing was good but I guess if I want to see Channing Tatum dance I'll watch Step Up instead.