Review (Blu-ray): MAGIC MIKE (2012)

So the supposedly retiring Steven Soderbergh’s penultimate movie is a micro-budget male stripper soap opera? Yep.

A solid, respectable, and profitable base hit (a triple to right center, let’s say, but just barely a triple), Magic Mike makes for an undemanding, not-terribly-stylized two-hour character study with a fair degree of heart. From the Saul Bass 70s Warner Brothers logo to the easy-does-it pace and naturalistic acting, it quickly becomes clear that Soderbergh’s going not so much for beefcake exploitation as depth of character, a hallmark of the long-ago era of New Hollywood movies in which he’s so obviously found inspiration both here and throughout his career.

In contemporary Tampa, Mike (Channing Tatum) is a ripped, great-looking, undereducated nice guy trying to get a stake together and start a custom furniture business. He’s already got a terrific beachfront pad, but it takes more than the dancing to make his nut: he does roofing, he does some amateur bookkeeping for his boss at the club, he does car detailing, he dances for horny, hooting and hollering bachelorettes and cougars (of all ages). For fun, he parties and has threesomes with a hot bisexual psychology student who diminishes and devalues him as adding up to little more than his beefcake image… which hurts.

Thing is, Mike dreams the all-American dream of true entrepreneurship, but like many people nowadays the bank won’t so much as give him a second look, not with credit like his. We don’t know how his credit got bad, but Mike has the air of a guy trying not to fuck up, trying to keep it all together and maybe at last doing a good job of it—or at least gettin’ there. Maybe. In any case and for whatever reasons, he seems to need to work in cash, which makes him appear like a phony and lowlife to the bank officer. But he’s not. And that hurts.

The movie’s through-line involves Mike’s mentorship of Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a fuckup kid whom Mike takes under his wing for no discernible reason but that Mike’s a nice guy, and can see that Adam needs guidance—maybe he reminds Mike of himself at that age. Adam likes to party, too, but he’s too into pills—into selling them, too.

In any case, the second act of the movie involves Adam’s transformation into a working dancer, while Mike slooooowly flirts with Adam’s uptight and motherly sister Brooke (Cody Horn). Later, after Adam gets in over his head with some drug dealers, Mike will be forced to choose bailing out his friend, or throwing him to the wolves.

The film’s standout performance belongs to Matthew McConaughey as Dallas, the strip club owner who wouldn’t send his dancers up there to do anything he wouldn’t first do himself, and who has his own entrepreneurial dreams in which the aging Mike may or may play a role, either as bookkeeper or dancer. Whatever else McConaughey does in his real-life spare time beside hitting bongos, here he’s in literal great physical form, has moves, wit, and most of all, charm. It’s his best part in some time, and when he’s not onscreen the movie’s other rather lifeless performances suffer. As for Tatum, his easygoing style and honest smile make Mike less magic than simply a nice guy trying to do the right thing, a solid performance and a character for whom I found myself rooting.

A modest but involving movie, Magic Mike features a modicum of hot male strip club style action, but only one explicit full-frontal moment that’s played more for laughs than titillation. An interesting film about real-seeming characters—what a treat. Soderbergh, along with ‘Peter Andrews,’ the pseudonymous credit he takes as Director of Photography on his movies, will be missed.