Mag­ic Mike XXL

“This was fun, I guess, what­ev­er this was.” Chan­ning Tatum is talk­ing about catch­ing up with old flame, Rome (Jada Pin­kett Smith), in her lav­ish man­sion-club of male strip­pers ruled by heart-flut­ter­ing­ly well-devel­oped black men. What­ev­er the film was, its sex­i­ness lingers like a post-coital after­glow. Its depic­tion of Adonis­es is ridicu­lous, it’s know­ing but most of all it is hot. Mag­ic Mike XXL is a gold thong-sport­ing, whipped cream-spurt­ing, counter-argu­ment to the the­o­ry that women want sex­i­ness to be subtle.

Steven Soderbergh’s orig­i­nal Mag­ic Mike had a tan­gled and seri­ous plot serv­ing the social­ly pro­gres­sive reminder that male strip­pers can be sen­si­tive and com­plex as well as buff. Gre­go­ry Jacob’s XXL has a much sim­pler arc. This is a ​‘get­ting the boys back togeth­er for one last show’ movie that – due to the loca­tion of the last show – is also a road movie. Every­thing that hap­pens in between point a and b can be attrib­uted to drugs, be they MDMA or per­for­mance highs. It’s a trip of a movie. And that’s its whole point.

The film opens with Chan­ning Tatum wear­ing clothes and heav­ing fur­ni­ture. His char­ac­ter, Mike, has long since ditched the ​‘Mag­ic’ stage moniker for the ordi­nary grind of run­ning a car­pen­try busi­ness. A shot of him star­ing out at the sea encap­su­lates that adorable trope – the sad hunk – and lets us know that he’s not ful­filled. For­tu­nate­ly he is punked into attend­ing a pool par­ty with his for­mer troupe, The Tam­pa Boys, who pitch a brief hit escapism in the form of a strip­per con­ven­tion in Myr­tle Beach, Flori­da. It will be everyone’s last roll of the thighs as the boys have been ditched by Matthew McConaugh­ey and Alex Pet­tyfer (who are ply­ing their trade in Macau, those turn­coats). Everyone’s already talk­ing about sell­ing yoghurt and the oth­er busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties that will come to define their work­ing lives.

But first for some­thing com­plete­ly wild. The pull of high-gloss, near­ly naked, tech­ni­cal­ly bril­liant and fan­ta­sy-embody­ing male enter­tain­ers is set up as a con­trast to the hum­drum rou­tines that are always wait­ing. Like death, hum­drum rou­tine is an equal oppor­tu­ni­ties oper­a­tor. It will wait for the Tam­pa Boys, for the scream­ing women they enter­tain and for us in the audi­ence. The best aspect of the film is that it knows it is all a drill. No troupe of real-life strip­pers could so per­fect­ly artic­u­late their roles as glitzy, baby-oil cov­ered social work­ers, sell­ing sex­u­al fan­ta­sy with every twinkly-eyed dis­rob­ing and some­times giv­ing it all pro-bono. For the movie bub­ble to fly high, we must all col­lude in invest­ing in some­thing delib­er­ate­ly at odds with any­thing that could exist out­side of the film’s two hours.

The wheels of the road trip, which begins in a frozen-yoghurt van, are greased by an enlight­ened strain of bro­man­tic bon­homie. Every­one gets a gag or two and shout out to Matt Bomer’s Ken for try­ing to impress peo­ple with the line, ​“I’m a Grade 3 Rei­ki heal­er.” But Tatum aside, Joe Man­ganiel­lo as Big Dick Richie is the one that steals the show. After drop­ping some MDMA, Mike gets Dick to con­fess that his heart’s not real­ly in his fire­man rou­tine. In a bid to get him per­form­ing a more relat­able sexy role, they set him a dare to make a ser­vice sta­tion atten­dant smile. What fol­lows will trans­form the way you think about The Back­street Boys and drink fridges.

Big Dick’s dance is hot and fun­ny but it’s not even the hottest and fun­ni­est thing going. It’s a tan­gent that is one of many. A drag club is vis­it­ed, Amber Heard takes a pic­ture of Mike piss­ing, Andie MacDowell’s house acts as a pow­er keg. If the dia­logue wasn’t so pol­ished and point­ed­ly ref­er­en­tial (hit­ting every­thing from Nar­cis­sus to Twi­light) then the tone would be set by woozy ston­er log­ic. Pumped up men and elab­o­rate set­tings are inter­change­able but a marked con­stant is the breath­tak­ing tech­ni­cal prowess of Tatum’s d…ance moves.

For any­one that for­got or didn’t know that Tatum was a pro­fes­sion­al dancer before becom­ing an A‑list actor there is an ear­ly scene that will blow at least one part of your body. The glee of Mike’s pre­ci­sion-based moves is found­ed both in the fiery overt­ness of the sex­u­al innu­en­does and the fact that Tatum – a movie star at the peak of his pow­ers – is will­ing to indulge the female and gay male gaze to the full extent of his skil­ful abil­i­ties. ​‘Pony’ by Gin­uwine is a filthy track with beats so squelchy that you have to pull your body ful­ly free of them after each drop. Tatum keeps those beats while doing his own wild, pirou­et­ting dance of seduction.

Mag­ic Mike XXL might be tedious if gen­der-flipped because sex­u­alised images are the norm when it comes to rep­re­sen­ta­tions of women. They are not the norm for men. As such, it is a blast of cool air and a cas­cade of hot feel­ing to see male actors game­ly com­mit­ting to giv­ing women what they want on the most base of lev­els. It would be a sin against the play­ful pack­age that is Mag­ic Mike XXL to ratio­nalise too inten­sive­ly too polit­i­cal­ly but in its own shal­low way, the film rep­re­sents diver­si­ty along racial, queer and size lines to an extent that is rarely seen in main­stream movies.

It all builds to danc­ing so dirty that Jacobs might as well co-opt the name of the Jen­nifer Grey-Patrick Swayze 1987 movie. It’s a mir­a­cle of well-craft­ed and well-exe­cut­ed dance chore­og­ra­phy that such pre­sump­tu­ous­ly sex­u­al moves feel safe for the audi­ence with­in the film. It may be an xxl reveal to say that in the most shock­ing moments of rhyth­mic rough and tum­ble, this writer won­dered if this is real­ly what women want. The answer came burst­ing out in three big letters.