Magic Mike

by XdarksparkX

Originally Written: May 17th, 2014

Well I'll be damned. Ladies (and some gentlemen), I apologize. I thought Magic Mike was just a stupid exploitation film. I'm here to admit it, I was wrong.

Magic Mike is worse than an exploitation film, it's an exploitation film that tries so hard not to be one on it's downtime, it ends up bogging itself down with some of the most mind-numbingly boring melodrama I've ever seen written for film. Magic Mike's script is akin to walking into a wall repeatedly to kill time before you eventually leave out the front door, like you were supposed to do hours ago.

I can hear the knee-jerk defense from a very certain section of the audience coming already, "you just don't understand it; it's a 'girl' thing." Well now hold the fuck on there, Gladys. That statement toes the line of sexism. For a film that seemed to be crusaded by the idea of gender equality (in that there are far more movies concerning the exploitation of women than there are of men, though if you ask me that seems to be logic that was the prime example used in the creation of the turn of phrase "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"), it would be dubious at best to assume that I cannot "get" a film simply because I have a penis, just as it would be ridiculous to say that a woman can't "get" a film because she's a woman. If someone of the female persuasion told me they didn't like Fight Club, Jurassic Park or Django Unchained, people would call for my head like I had committed high treason in the Game of Thrones universe if I uttered something even close to the phrase: "you don't understand [these films] because you're a woman". Likely because this is a stupid, close-minded bit of reasoning.

However, to imply that what I watched in dazed confusion for two hours yesterday was something with such nuance and subtext that it can only be seen by having a different set of genitals, or having a higher estrogen level, or by removing my freaking Y chromosome is probably the most blatantly raging bout of 1930s styled gender bias I've seen since the debate about a woman's rights to her own damn body hit the fan during the 2012 United States presidential election.

I hate to break this to some of you swooning fans, but Magic Mike isn't smart or intelligent. There isn't any deep subtext that only you are in tune to. It's a shallow story that orbits around scenes of guys flailing their junk in women's faces. Know that if you attempt to deny this, it will look just as ridiculous as if those attracted to women in your life tried to fabricate some deep, existential subtext of Debbie Does Dallas. As long as we're clear on this fact about the movie, we can move forward.

I will say though, being a straight man obviously does not allow me to understand the clear-cut sex appeal of the movie. The thing that had me confused though was, I don't get why some women chose to act like they've never seen a good looking guy with his shirt off until this movie came out. To play a very controversial card, I don't see many sober straight guys doing that when a chick breaks out her set of twins in a film. The ones I do see doing that are either 12 years old, drunk off their ass, or fucking clownshoes, and who wants to deal with any of those idiots anyway? Maybe the guys I hang out with have all come to terms with being desensitized to it, and maybe part of the whole equality movement is that if guys can openly be horndogs when they see strippers, so can women. (Though why exactly you would want to be the female equivalent to those aforementioned clownshoes I have no idea. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.)

Oh, but wait. One of my best friends, who is female, flipped on the movie while channel surfing and bored to tears. She was ten minutes into tearing the movie to shreds before I even got a comment in. Excuse me, could you open that window over there? I have a theory that might need to be thrown out. Appreciate it.

Clearly she and I are just crazy though, because even Rotten Tomatoes -- as of this writing -- has the film sitting at an 80% fresh "approved" rating. I was close to smashing my head into the nearest wall when I found this out, until I realized this rating might be due to the critics crediting man behind the camera: Steven Soderbergh.

For those of you unaware, Steven Soderbergh has directed many critically acclaimed and commercially successful films such as: Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Contagion, the Ocean's Eleven remake, and what most consider his tour de force: Sex, Lies and Videotape.

I on the other hand don't give two flying shits about who directed it, and will not be granting any points to the movie because of this. Steven Spielberg went and made Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for fucks sake. There is no precedence for a movie being a guaranteed piece of cinematic mastery and genius simply because a very good director happened to be the driving creative force behind it. Directors are human and they phone things in or make stupid choices from time to time. My all-time favorite director David Fincher admitted to phoning in Alien 3, and one could argue his direction of some of his more recent films like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was uninspired. Magic Mike reeks of Soderbergh simply shrugging his shoulders half the time and saying "whatever."

Roughly two-thirds of the way through, I found myself feeling sorry for any woman who went to see this as the male exploitation film it was advertised as. The strip club and other "dance" scenes seem like they only take up 30 or 40% of the movie. The rest is filled with snooze-inducing melodrama. I'll admit, I have found myself being a sucker for intriguing melodrama (I fully admit to watching CW's One Tree Hill and 90210 in their entirety for crying out loud), but the melodrama in Magic Mike is so painfully uninteresting and uninspired, a day of long and tedious dental work seems like a more attractive alternative to watching it again. It's like watching everyday people have mundane everyday conversations, which amounts to actively trying to weed out the bullshit filler to find the lines that are actually supposed to be character or plot development. 

The characters all feel like the transformations they go through are so minimalistic. Channing Tatum's title character wants to open his own business, and make something of himself and not be a "40 year old stripper". Admirable. What happens in the end? He quits his stripping job, goes head-on into the uncertainty of unemployment because he finds out that his boss has no loyalty to any of his workers. *gasp* No, really!? I'm sorry, what made you think the guy who wants an empire of strip clubs wasn't running primarily off of greed and willing to throw anyone in front of the train for said greed? Is it because it's Matthew McConaughey? It was because it's Matthew McConaughey, wasn't it. 

"It's totally because it was Matthew McConaughey. 
I mean, dude won an Oscar bro!" 

Nothing of Mike's personal situation changed, he still needs to pay his bills, and he still has a shitty credit score. So...why didn't he just do this in the first place? "Wanting to make something of myself was a good pipe dream, until I found out that I was just a cash machine to my boss. This betrayal of trust! This... defamation of my morals!"  Maybe I missed the point where McConaughey said he'd send bouncers to break Tatum's face if he quit, but I fail to see the tactile tension and consequence of this decision that wasn't present before.

I swear, watching some of the scenes outside of the strip club felt like I was reading someone's journal if it read like:

"Got up late this morning. Stubbed toe trying to get ready. FML.

Rain is stupid. Late for class. Teacher was a bitch as usual. No assignments though.

Went out to eat, good meal. Jenna called, she's cool. I'd hit it.

Hit up this party. Stole some beer. Scored some X. Some chick blew me.

Jeff almost OD'd. Dumbass. How'd I get home?

Couldn't fall asleep. Infomercials are cheesy. Insomnia." 

Now, go ahead and try to say that the dialog is a more realistic representation of life. If I wanted an exact replica of real life, I wouldn't pay ten-dollars to sit in a theater and watch other people live it (or in this case, sit on my ass for two hours staring at a TV). People tend to go to the movies to escape reality, not to be burdened by it's mundane passages. Hell, that's why even reality TV is sensationalized -- true reality TV would be boring as fuck to watch.

The best word I can think of to describe Soderbergh's direction in Magic Mike is lazy. For so many scenes, it feels like this was his cadence: set up the scene, leave the camera on tripod, call action, take Director of Photography and Camera Crew with me to get doughnuts and coffee from craft services, have Assistant Director call cut when the actors finish their lines if I'm not back in time. There is such a glaring absence of medium or close up shots when two people are talking, it made me realize that MTV's The Real World has better and more creative conversation coverage than this movie. I get that it's a stylistic choice, but the problem inherent with said choice is that it takes away from the intimacy with the characters. By feeling so distanced, it becomes hard to "get to know a character". Take the mid shots and close ups David O Russell used in Silver Linings Playbook for instance. The intimacy that both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence's characters share is evident from the close ups, and we as the audience begin to feel closer to them because the framing makes us actually closer. How can I get into a story when it feels like the director wants me to stay far away from the forced "plot point" scenes that take up damn near 70% of his movie!? The only reasoning I can think to do this is to make us feel like awkward voyeurs, a feeling one should probably have when at a strip club or similar establishment. You get half a pass here Soderbergh... but just half.

There is also a glaring lack of ambient noise or music during these "wide shot dialog scenes". All I can hear is this deafening silence when someone stops talking. Again, I think this would work if it was coupled with intimate medium shots or closeups on the characters, showing that they are wholly and completely focused on each other to the point where they can't even hear the world around them. There's a scene at a carnival or amusement park with Channing Tatum and his forced love interest played by Cody Horn. They walk through the park, talking amongst themselves. (Dear GOD! Soderbergh used a dolly to have the camera move with them! Be still my heart!) In this scene, there is a jarring lack of ambiance: no crowd noise, no music and sound effects from the games booths, nothing. They sit at a picnic table by a go-kart track, and not even the faint noise from the karts is audible at all. Obviously it shouldn't be as loud as it probably would be in real life, as it would drown out the dialog, but the karts go by damn near muted, and it makes the entire scene uncomfortable. Is that what I'm supposed to feel? Am I supposed to feel uncomfortable while watching this clumsy, forced romantic subplot unfold? Because that's what's happening, Steven.

The ending is probably the worst culprit of just phoned in effort, and contains the biggest "ahh fuck it" move pulled in the movie. After Tatum meets Alex Pettyfer's character, he runs into his sister, the aforementioned Cody Horn. Her entire one-note throughout the movie is "protect my brother Mike", but when the ending rolls around, both she and Tatum basically say "fuck that kid", figuring he's beyond help and let him go to probably die in a ditch down in Miami somewhere from a lethal combo of hookers and blow. Lovely! 

"Well, I got you into this, but I guess you're just too far gone for me to even feel semi-responsible for your downward spiral. Oh, your sister says 'fuck off' too. Welp, see ya at the morgue when they ask me to identify your body!"

And after such a weak buildup of Tatum wanting to do more with his life, and Horn's brother falling into "the fast life" of a male stripper and taking up Tatum's mantle, everything basically culminates to the fact that despite Tatum wanting to be treated as more than just a guy who's only worth his six-pack, that's essentially all he's treated as in the ending. Horn smirks when he says "what can we do for seven hours" before jumping across the table to make out with him. So, the difference from the beginning is that he won't be making money, and he now has no job, and has a credit score in the toilet... but he's... happy? Because... of... stuff? And will do... something with his life? Maybe? I honestly don't have a fucking clue. The movie ends on such an abrupt point that everyone comes out looking like lost dumbasses. Is that what this was supposed to be? A relation piece for dumbasses to not feel so dumb, because poorly written characters in an exploitation movie are also... dumb?

Overall, there is a general hollow feeling to everything in Magic Mike. Nothing feels concrete in it's presence. Maybe that was the intention, but if it is, is the movie trying to say that Tatum's character is so broken from his ordeal at the strip club that he now even views romantic pursuits as hollow endeavors?

After all that, I'm sure there are people who don't get why I do this, why I tear down movies the way I do on here. I've heard some of my friends say they don't believe I actually like movies, because I tear down so many. Well, lend me your ear and I shall tell you the method to my madness courtesy of Morgan Freeman.

"Because every time I show up and explain something, I earn a freckle."
-South Park's Morgan Freeman

Making movies at the level of nation-wide theatrical release is a very rare privilege. Those able to make these movies are granted a gift every time a studio or production group picks up a script and green-lights a project. They are given an almost demigod level of power, to reach out to people from all different backgrounds, cultures and faiths. And for the time of 90 minutes to 3 hours (more if they split one movie into two parts like they've been doing recently), they are able to tell a story that can make every one of those people forget about those meaningless differences and unify a group of creatures who seem to constantly find themselves focused on the idiosyncratic rather than the harmonious.

Movies can bring us together. They can empower us, enlighten us, and open us up to empathy with people or groups we had previously written off. When I see a movie that seemingly throws this gift away by being lazy in it's message or story, it feels like I'm watching as this gift is squandered. This gift is something I want to be given one day. I will likely be struggling for a very, very long time to obtain said gift and get my stories told. But in everything I write -- no matter how silly or crazy it may be -- it always maintains the core that people will be able to see a reflection of themselves, or someone they know. I want them to be able to connect with the journey, or with the characters involved. To offer a differing perspective that allows them to laugh at the pains of unimportant everyday struggle, or to realize something they hadn't before. And for those who were like me, I want a very special group of people to realize that someone else feels the way they do, and that if this movie says nothing else, it says that they aren't alone is this fucked up world.

Now, I'm not saying every movie has to be a deep work of art, and I'm not saying Magic Mike doesn't have it's place in the world. There's a sequel coming out, and whether the script is inspired or not, I'm sure it will make just as much bank as the first one. One of my favorite filmmakers, Writer / Director Kevin Smith, once described the concept of critics to the art of filmmaking perfectly: "Who is anyone else to tell you that your art is wrong, man? That you failed to express yourself through your art?" He has a very good point, and it's made me re-evaluate how I critically assess movies. However, his comment doesn't deter the reasoning for this site. For this movie, and for almost all of the movies that have articles on here really, I'm pointing out things that didn't allow me (or any other contributing writer) to connect with what is being presented from a storyteller's perspective, not an artistic one. If I can't connect to the characters, it's hard to see their plight as anything other than trivial. When Alex Pettyfer's character overdoses halfway through Magic Mike, I don't feel any sort of tragedy because I lack a true connection with his character. That's what a directors job is when a film introduces a narrative. It's exactly why I rip the Transformers sequels to shreds (God help me, even more are on the way...). No one in the audience -- short of the 5-year-old with the big barrel of Coca-Cola in his lap who's never seen one of these movies in his life -- actually buys it when they kill off Optimus Prime for the fifteenth time, because some convoluted deus ex machina bullshit has allowed him to come back fourteen times prior. So instead of saying "oh shit, they killed him", I'm saying "yeah yeah, when is he coming back?" When there's a lack of feeling any true stakes in a movie, it can make it almost impossible to reasonably care for characters (and the stakes don't have to be death). In the end, I just want people to understand one thing: just because a movie is made to entertain, doesn't mean it has to insult your basic intelligence as a human being while doing so.

Some of you will read that last line and say "but these movies you review/rant about don't insult my intelligence". If you like any of the movies I happen to throw into my line of fire, good, don't change that on my opinion. The point of this site isn't to tell you what to like and what not to like. My belief is people can like any movie they choose. Sometimes I would like for more of us critics to be able to see and judge certain movies for what they are (judging a film based on it's worth as an amazing classic or if it's "Oscar worthy" as opposed to assessing if it accomplished what it was trying to do within it's narrative is ridiculous). A movie should be an engrossing ride, and that even with it's problems, if you can walk away and say you were swept away for it's runtime, really that's all that matters. There are those who will say what I wrote at the beginning of this paragraph, and are also seemingly unaware of what a lot of producers and studio heads truly think of us -- as nothing but blind sheep willing to be led to anything with pretty pictures that can be warped to vaguely resemble cognitive sustenance. And well, as long as they're out there, I guess it just means that there will always be a reason for me to continue to try and "spark the dark".