Starring Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Bomer, Riley Keough, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, Joe Manganiello, Wendi McLendon-Covey

(6-Good Film)

Fun. Dramatic. Strong.

Dallas: Will you welcome to the stage, the one, the only… Magic Mike!

“You are the husband they never had. You are the dreamboat that never came along,” says Dallas (McConaughey), the seedy impresario behind a nightclub of gaudy male strippers. Magic Mike (Tatum) is his main attraction, but Magic Mike is not real. We see Magic Mike during the day, going by Michael, working some construction job, struggling to start a business of his own. That’s what this film is actually about. Night versus day. Illusion versus reality. For a certain amount of time each night, Mike gets to live in a fantasy world. It’s only when he begins to mentor a young, new stripper, Adam (Pettyfer), that he begins to see how hollow it all is. Magic Mike is a solid film underneath the heavy layers of pageantry, eye candy, and other distractions; most of it necessary. It can’t quite convince me that they are not all meatheads, but it did make me care about their plight and I enjoyed the journey, besides.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

(994)