Review of Magic Mike XXL (2015) by Timothy A — 28 Jul 2015

The most actively cringeworthy thing about this may well be that you can practically hear smarmy critiques about the "magic being lost as you watch it. For the most part it's just all a bit blah.

If you had to point to a single progenitor for the original Magic Mike, it would be that it was a campy backstage musical without the music or the camp, complete with a central triumvirate of scheming ingénue, hardened lifer, and an in-betweener deciding which of either of those he identified with.

Very early in this instalment you learn that two of those characters have gone to Macau, and what follows would be a lot more interesting if the camera crew had followed them. The plot, such as it is, consists of the stripping crew deciding to have a last hurrah for no apparent reason as nobody actually appears to be quitting, with a new act that draws on supposedly authentic interests and character traits that couldn't be more tacked on.

It's all topped off with Jada Pinkett-Smith purring into a microphone telling the women in the audience to feel how the original instalment actualy *made* them feel, and most of the cast only gets down to the g-string once and only one of them does away with it entirely (take a bow, Joe Maganiello) so really, it's not even good for that.

Even Soderbergh couldn't have saved this mess, it's understandable why he didn't try.