As a heterosexual woman, naked men are my thing. While my personal tastes tend to run a little more Beer Belly Bill and less Magic Mike, I was on board when offered the chance to screen Magic Mike XXL in advance of the movie's premiere. It was pretty much what I expected, and the decision to order extra cheese for my nachos to suit the suspected cheesiness of the film was well-informed.
I'll be blunt: Magic Mike XXL has little to offer in way of plot, character development, or witty banter. There is no one scene clinching an Academy Award nomination, and most of the writing was likely completed passing a sauce stained napkin back and forth on "Bucket O' Wings" night at a Hollywood Applebees. What Magic Mike XXL does have is an abundance of muscular, lithe, talented dancers, who shake their oiled asses to the beat of a sweet soundtrack. There's gyrating and rubbing and sex equipment and sparkles. It's precisely what you expect in a stripper movie, but it is also so, so much more. Magic Mike is a women’s movie, and a fucking great one at that.
Despite the conventionally attractive male physical forms, It's not the men’s bodies that make this movie. (Although in the larger view they function much like extra blue cheese does for your Bucket O' Wings - it's not the main meal, but rather something that makes it more palatable, and afterwards you're glad you paid the extra.
Magic Mike XXL is a fantastic movie for so many other reasons than the barely there G-strings and really firm asses and surprising cameo appearances. (I am looking at you, Michael Strahan. I am looking haaaaard.)
I saw Magic Mike XXL in a dark Toronto theater full of women. We were all kinds. We were big and small, tall and short, all colours, all shapes, all sizes. (I was the short apple-shaped curly haired brunette in the back with her mouth open because what the in the actual fuck is even happening on screen right now?
But then I started watching; really watching. When I did, I noticed something very different about this movie. It's the shift in gaze here - from the traditional male gaze to the oft-forgotten and always under-appreciated female gaze that I noticed first. Make no mistake; this is a movie made for women, clearly, but it's also Made. For. Women.
No other movie this year has been as body positive without the increasingly pat "love the skin your in" message. This movie - and the men in it - interact with women of all colours, sizes, shapes, and ages - and they do it with no side-eye or chuckling. It is what it is, and it is positive and female-friendly and while I'll stop short of calling it a complete feminist victory (I don't think Magic Mike XXL passes the Bechdel test) it is a fine start to what we can hope is a new tradition in film making.
Amy Schumer's Trainwreck is good also; but not as good as Magic Mike. I liked it; aa lot even. I laughed frequently and even enjoyed it far more than I did Magic Mike, but it portrayed Amy's character as an a anomaly rather than an example of the standard. And she may well be, at least in the circles in which I run. But isn't that why we go to the movies in the first place – to escape that which we know and see portrayals of things which we are not entirely familiar?
The men in this movie travel (I don't even know where but there's an RV and the scenery changes a few times so excuse me for not recalling exactly but I have a good reason and that reason is Joe Maganiello and some sexy snack foods.) There were no jokes about weight, no out-of-earshot jabs at transgender characters and dancers and clubs, no after-the-fact chatter about “doing her a favour” or “taking pity” on a group of women who in any other film would have been immediately dubbed MILFs. These male characters seemed to truly appreciate each woman they encountered whether or not she was a client, employer, or the mother of a potential girlfriend.
So while I will admit to Magic Mike XXL making me a wee bit horny (because PEPSI), what it did in even greater abundance was to make me very, very happy.
Magic Mike XXL knows their audience, and to be blunt, they nailed it.
Image Source: Warner Bros.
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