Review of Magic Mike (2012) by Stefano C — 12 Jul 2018

A pretty intellectual character piece, surprisingly.

Set in the world of male strippers, Magic Mike is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Channing Tatum in a story inspired by his real life. The film follows Mike (Tatum) as he takes a young dancer called The Kid (Pettyfer) under his wing and schools him in the fine arts of partying, picking up women, and making easy money.

Alright, alright. I finally sucked it up. As a 19-year old male, I was honestly not looking forward to watching this. I couldn't suck up my pride and watch males strip, even if it was getting good reception. Finally, a few nights ago, I watched this film on Netflix and it was actually pretty solid. In fact, it was a pretty good film that was way better than I thought it'd be.

One thing that I noticed about "Magic Mike" right off the bat was its choice of coloring. For the whole movie, it went with a more warm, yellow tint. Every outdoor scene was tainted in this warm, enriching yellow. While conceptually I don't see the deep meaning, I thought the choice was well made. The whole film had a great cinematography and great color.

Surprisingly, there's a lot of character development. We follow the character of Adam, who starts off as this shy kid who doesn't know what he's doing. Throughout the film, he goes through this transformation that turns him into something a lot worse. When he falls into this lifestyle, you see how his attitude changes. He becomes a completely different person and we have to watch Mike deal with him through these changes. For Mike's character, we watch as he figures out what he really wants to do as he pushes to be something more and something better. The characters in this film were really interesting and it was enjoyable to follow along with their arc.

Yes, this movie has probably a total of 15 of just pure stripping. No, I didn't really care for those parts, but they weren't the worst thing. They were surrounded by this really meaningful story and overall, the entire film was a well put together. While this film definitely pushes some eye-candy moments onto the audience, I have to give it a lot of props for what it did.

In the end, "Magic Mike" was a pretty great film and I actually really enjoyed it. And for better or worse, I actually own this film, and its sequel on Blu-Ray now. So I guess we'll see how the sequel lives up to it real soon!