Magic Mike XXL (2015)

(Rating: ☆ ½ out of 4)

This film is not recommended.

In brief: The filmmakers can adjust their junk the best they can, but junk is still junk, no matter the size.

GRADE: C-

Life is filled with irony. While driving home after seeing the stud dud, Magic Mike XXL, the radio station began playing You Gotta Have a Gimmick from Gypsy, that classic show- tune about strippers. Fate? Coincidence? Bad luck? Whatever, it struck me as a sign of the times. The gimmick was there: The bodies are toned and well oiled. Their moves well choreographed and fluid. Sex is for sale once again in this sequel. Only this time around, the sleaze is on slow-boil and the meat has been tenderized for consumption. The sordidness of male strippers is on the back burner as this film version celebrates the legitimacy of male dancers as a serious art form. Really? This is pure (or impure) fantasy, totally devoid of any reality. With all of its come-ons and dirty dancing (and no frontal nudity), the film never satisfies its intended audience.

Magic Mike XXL is not a serious expose about the sex business as its predecessor purported to be. The first installment tried to show the dirty side of the sex-for-sale business, with its sleazy show biz world on display. Not so here. This sequel is a simple dance movie with lots of sex thrown in. It's more interested in all the right moves, but there's very little reality, plot, or logic. This version has become a road movie as Mike (Channing Tatum) and his buddies, known as the Kings of Tampa, deciding to relive their glory days by putting on one last show, an encore performance to go out in style at a stripper convention in Myrtle Beach.

Dare I say, directed (and I am using the term very loosely) by Gregory Jacobs and written (even more loosely) by Reid Carolin, Magic Mike XXL is silly and naughty fun, especially made for repressed gays or horny females looking for the cheapest of thrills. The film just may be perfect for bachelorette parties too, but as a movie-going experience, it's limp.

The non-direction is the main reason for this erectile dysfunction of a movie. The film lacks any subtlety or good taste with its groping and in-your-crotch shots. The film's salaciousness overpowers any fun. But the film does treat both sexes with equal disdain: men are sexual objects and women are sex crazed nymphs. What a piece of work is man!

The screenplay is an absolute mess. The dialog has an improvisational vibe that is incomprehensible most of the times and stilted the rest of the times. It wants to impress with hip rap, gangster swagger, and non-stop f-bombs, as if to say, "I'm cool", but it all comes across as just plain silly and labored. The story spends too much time meeting various characters that never amount to much. Scenes need judicious cutting and go on endlessly (a visit to a black private club, a meeting with some older repressed Southern ladies, a drug- filled night on the beach).

Most of the choreography (by Alison Faulk) is sexual gyrations and simulated sexual posing, although it is hard to tell what action is being done on stage due to the lousy editing that is too close for comfort and rarely shows off the dance moves and some of the worst photography to be seen in a major studio film: ugly, grainy, out of focus and usually shot in a dinghy yellow-brown hue. Surprisingly, Steven Soderbergh mishandled both duties.

The cast is uneven. Except for Mr. Tatum, who really can dance, Matt Bomer who tri

Fmovies: I liked the first Magic Mike, I liked it a lot. I found it funny and interesting. It was entertaining. I thought that Channing Tatum was a really good dancer and, while watching, I regretted of not being a male stripper myself (beautiful life, lot of girls, you knowÂ…).

But this one is terrible. Boring, depressingÂ… I wonder who could really like it: girls? I doubt it. Men? Not a chance.

I won't tell a word about the plot, as IMDb warns me not to do it. I will only state my disappointment for the lack of an entertaining story, a catching character or a good show. A terrible wasting of good actors and time.

I love Channing Tatum and I'd go and watch anything with him in it. I also liked the first Magic Mike movie for what it was - very lightweight entertainment, some hot male bodies, a bit of humour, a bit of a plot line and some great dancing.

This sequel is just grubby, and, well boring. The dancing is minimal. Most of the 'performances' at the end aren't dancing at all. The Andy McDowell house scenes went on and on ... and on, with absolutely no plot purpose and no dancing, so what was the point? And the scenes with the women 'clients' at the Jade Pickett Smith establishment are pretty demeaning to the women. The bumping and grinding on fat women in the movie is clearly meant to show what great 'performers' these strippers are, able to fake it with any desperate female. I'm absolutely no prude, but it all became pretty sickening in the end, and I was just BORED with the whole thing really. Channing, it's time to move on, mate.

Magic Mike XXL fmovies. "It's not bro time, it's show time. Are you guys ready?" It's been three year since Mike (Tatum) last danced. He runs a successful business and is looking to make a great life for himself. When he hears that the rest of the Kings of Tampa want to give up the life too they all decide there is only one way to retire. The boys head to Myrtle Beach for one last performance. First thing I have to say is that I am a man, so this review is done from my point of view. I thought the first movie wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but to me it was just cheesy and actually pretty much what I expected. I do remember there was enough comedy in it to keep me interested. This movie seemed to play on the women will watch the hell out of this so it doesn't matter what we do. As far as that thinking goes, it worked. My wife really liked it, but I'm not sure if she liked the movie or just liked watching the movie. This is a movie that is pretty much review proof, either you want to see a movie about male strippers or you don't. Not much else to say. Overall, not as good as the first one, mainly because this one had no real story. On the other hand I am a guy, not the target audience, and the only reason most women watch is not for the plot. I give this a C.

I totally loved the first Magic Mike and the first 5 minutes of XXL looked good too. But after those first 5 minutes....XXL suddenly turned into one long improv show - The sort of improv done by people with fabulous bodies and no sense of humor whatsoever - The sort of improv where audience members shout out topics like "Frozen Yogurt" or "A boring person sits next to you on a bus and just won't shut up." After a while I felt sorry for the actors who seemed to try so hard to come up with something, anything, to say, while growing more and more resentful as in "Hey - we're strippers, not writers. Do we have to do everything?"

And the dancing this time? Yuck. I even felt sorry for the female audience members in the dance sequences. Imagine that you are just out for a fun bachelorette party, when you suddenly find yourself thrust 6 feet in the air with your "bachelorette parts" strapped across some strange guy's face and then the guy starts doing somersaults and cartwheels. Ouch.

I left about 3/4ths of the way through. It was just all too sad.

Strange it is to pay seven to ten dollars to see a movie about male strippers--and none of them even remove their tee shirts until a so- called "grand finale" at the end. This is when our boys actually strip down to speedos and jock straps. Wow. Channing Tatum, the main star, was all over the media months before the premiere, assuring one and all that this sequel to the highly successful original, "Magic Mike," definitely deserves a "hard X" since it'll show off a lot more of the guys than previously seen. As he winked and smirked, he also promised us he would keep the most handsome of the original strippers, Joe Manganiello, naked as much as possible. Tatum's promises never appeared. Instead, we have nearly two hours of non-stop verbal garbage as the guys ad-lib and we can't understand anything they say since they all swallow their words. In their van they're traveling to Myrtle Beach for a stripper convention and along they way, they have several encounters with women who are so unattractive they're only blurs. Then we come to big stripper event. We're tantalized by seeing other male strippers preparing for the show but we never see them. All we see is a hysterical carnival like routine featuring Tatum, Joe and Matt Bonner. They whirl around, move their hips against women and when they finish, we realize none of our hotties even showed their butts, let alone their joy sticks. Probably the most hideous sequence in the movie that drags on forever is when the guys stop at a plantation to see black strippers but it's all filmed so darkly you can't tell what's happening in the shadows. Poor Jada Pickett Smith. She should definitely grab the Raspberry Award for the Most Horrendous cameo in the movie. This is a movie that could safely play on the Disney Channel but even the kids would be bored out of their skulls.