Magic Mike XXL
I was quite a fan of Magic Mike, the 2012 movie in which Channing Tatum repeatedly got his kit off and shook his booty. I mostly liked it because Channing Tatum repeatedly got his kit off and shook his booty. But it had other things going for it too, including deft storytelling and emotional complexity.*
I’m also quite a fan of its sequel, Magic Mike XXL (out this Friday), in which Channing Tatum repeatedly gets his kit off and shakes his booty. I mostly liked it because… you know. But it too has other things going for it. In this case, deft storytelling and emotional complexity are not among them: it’s a rambling road movie in which Mike (Tatum) and his buff buddies experience one amiable incident after another en route to a stripper convention, learning a little something about themselves along the way but nothing too seismic.
There’s a laid-back sweetness to the whole thing that I found rather affecting. The convention performance is certainly the climax but this is a process-oriented rather than goal-oriented affair. It’s not about winning a prize or even getting the girl — except insofar as making her smile counts as both. It’s about quality time and reciprocal affection among men, and the respectful appreciation they show for women, including those older or larger than the Hollywood norm. At times, one suspects the script was stress-tested to meet the approval of both middle-American bachelorette parties and campus feminists — no bad thing. Comparably, when the guys strut their stuff in a drag club, rather than crudely stereotyping effeminacy they pay careful homage to the refined hand gestures of vogueing, then party with the emcee.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the movie offers a heartfelt masterclass in burlesque, drag and cabaret performance theory. Like practitioners of those forms, Mike and his stripper pals specialise in solo short-form performances, and the lesson he imparts to them over the course of the story is one I absolutely subscribe to as a cabaret critic: the best work comes from the heart, expresses the performer’s distinctive personal sensibility, and values meaningful audience engagement just as highly as technical execution.
Mike gets the ball rolling as the crew hit the road, questioning their plan to present a show comprising well-worn crowdpleasers. “Are you a fireman?” he asks one of them as he yanks his big yellow helmet from the costume container. “Have you ever wanted to be a fireman?” The helmet goes out the window along with the other clichéd accoutrements of off-the-peg strip acts and, in due course, the guys draw on their individual tastes and talents to conceive acts that only they could have come up with. What’s more, they involve the audience directly in their work, not only through the back-and-forth of stripping convention (cupping a hand to an ear to elicit an encouraging whoop, for instance) but by getting individuals onstage as part of the act. The response within the movie is terrific — as you might expect – but at the screening I saw, the enthusiasm extended from the screen into the movie theatre.
There are lessons here for the burlesque performer who isn’t and never will be a 1950s showgirl and the drag artist who isn’t and never will be Britney Spears. I’m not suggesting such influences can’t be successfully incorporated into an act by someone who truly appreciates them and has something original to express about their meaning. But don’t just do it because you calculate the audience will like it.
If you want a crowd to love what you do, do it out of love. Take it from Mike.
Magic Mike XXL is out this Friday.
*Think of Mike and his fellow strippers backstage, empty and exhausted; or his realisation of his status as a potential love interest’s mere bit on the side; or his wondrously wounded and inarticulate attempt to defend his conduct to the woman he really feels something for.
