PCP on DVD - Magic Mike

Sometimes I have to watch a movie that I don't particularly want to watch. A movie about male strippers usually tops this list. However, I knew that a) I'd be able to write a review of this for my blog, so yay - more content and b) this one is a good IOU movie to my wife since she has to put up with crappy action movies that she hates (plus she totally loves Channing Tatum), so it's a win-win. At least I got to watch this at home on DVD and wasn't forced to watch this in theaters.

Magic Mike - 2012, rated R. My rating: 8 out of 10.

For a movie about male strippers, it turns out that Magic Mike was actually a lot more bearable than I expected. In fact, outside of the stripping sequences that I as a hetero male did not appreciate, the film was actually downright good. This is probably mostly due to the fact that the film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, a pretty damn good director. Also, aside from lots of buttocks, there is not much in the way of nudity, there is no full frontal from Tatum or any of the other strippers (fortunately), plus Olivia Munn is topless in the film too, which was a nice surprise.

The film tells the story of Mike (Tatum), a stripper who has dreams of getting out of the stripping business and opening his own professional company building handmade furniture. But he is stuck for now working for club manager Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), a shady businessman who wants to expand his strip club business. Mike takes under his wing a young man, Adam (Alex Pettyfer) and shows him the ropes of the skin business because he sees something in Adam, and also he wants to get in Adam's sister's pants. But Adam turns to the dark side of the skin industry in a hurry, getting into trouble with drugs and falling in with the wrong crowd, and Mike needs to save his bacon.

The film is your typical underdog story that just happens to be set in a strip club. Soderbergh does a great job with the plot sequences, and the actors themselves do a pretty impressive job with the dance sequences. Seriously, I wish I had half of Tatum's moves (but it's not surprising that he can dance, he was in Step Up, and he used to be a stripper before he was an actor). Anyways, unlike the other two movies I've seen about the skin industry, Showgirls and Striptease, Magic Mike is something those two films aren't: an actual good movie. Not a movie I'll ever watch again in my life, but it wasn't as bad as I feared either.

Basically guys - if you're in the doghouse with your lady friend, buy her this movie, and you just might get back in her good graces. And if she forces you to watch it with her, don't worry, it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been.