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Canberra Today 13°/17° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: ‘Magic Mike’ (MA) ***

STEVEN Soderbergh’s film, derived loosely from the background of co-producer and main man Channing Tatum, has generated argument on the International Movie Database about its sexism.

Tatum plays Mike, a stripper at the Xquisite Club where the audience is almost totally female, which explains the club’s corps de ballet of buffed, bronzed and uninhibited young men whose earnings are the dollar bills that women tuck into the strings of the film’s prophylaxis against the dreaded XXX rating, their genital pouches.

There’s nothing visibly magic about Mike, a good guy comfortable in his after-dark profession and happy with its fringe benefits of liquor and willing one-night-stand partners, preferably in multiples. By day he works as a roof tiler, where he meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer) whom he recruits into the club’s dancers.

Adam’s sister Brooke (Cody Horn) is protective of him and barely tolerates the lifestyle into which Mike has invited him, from which Adam develops behavioural issues. He discovers Ecstacy and starts peddling it. Soon he’s in debt to his supplier and at risk of a thrashing.

As you might expect from Steven Soderbergh, “Magic Mike” offers plusses. While essentially non-erotic, it provokes discussion about women’s sexuality, which has to be a good thing. The dance numbers are vigorous, very butch, very in-your-face or groin, uninhibited about the participation of young women happy to take part in dry copulation with beautiful undressed young men whom the law permits them to touch anywhere except on the crotch. The choreography would never make Covent Garden.

Matthew McConaughey rather dominates the film as club-owner Dallas. As Mike, Tatum’s performance exceeds expectations. And the ending offers agreeably enigmatic options for watchers to tick their preferred box.

Will straight men find the thought of “Magic Mike” inviting enough to accompany their wives to it? This male (wife otherwise occupied) found it agreeable, although low-key cinematography made interpreting what was happening something of a chore. In my judgement, yes, it is sexist, but in a reverse way from other films of similar ilk showing bare nipples with breasts attached. Anyway, likability is a matter for individual judgement.

 At all cinemas

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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