Magic Mike... isn't so magical

Personally, I wanted to see “Rock of Ages”.  But it was playing in a theatre that was old and run down and I didn’t look forward to my feet sticking to the floor as we tried to find a seat that didn’t have unknown sticky substances on it.  So, it was stay at home or choose another movie.

Now, in addition to the cover story in Entertainment Weekly, I had seen the trailers and TV ads for this one. It sounded interesting enough. The story of male strippers. Add to this the enticement of titillation that the trailers and TV ads created. Me gay, them hot.  Could be a good fit.

Normally I don’t notice the other audience members when I go into a movie theatre.  However, walking into this one it was an immediate recognition of 150 people which comprise of women and 3 men, of which my partner and I were two of them.  The Third Man was with a woman… possibly a beard, possibly a wife.  Either way, I wasn’t going to spend any more time on them because the overwhelming feeling of estrogen run amok was in the air. I worried that I had stumbled into a secret meeting of womanhood and if they discovered me, I would have been sexually ravaged beyond human comprehension.  But then the trailers for upcoming movies started and I forgot about my fears.  The trailers were on the “no”, “no” and “not even on DVD” list.  I should have heeded the warning and asked for my money back, but I didn’t.

The movie started with a nice bare backside shot of Channing Tatum.  This would have been awesome except for the woman in the audience started whooping and throwing dollar bills at the screen. I wondered if they realized the concept of film versus live performance? It wasn’t for me to tell them and I’m sure the cleaning staff appreciated the extra money.

Let me say right off the bat: the guys in the movie are so hot that this kind of Eye Candy requires Eye Insulin to go with it.  However, this is also a movie. So, when the hot scenes become less and less and the story is capital “B” BORING, I quickly realized that we could have stayed home, reread the Entertainment Weekly article and viewed the trailer online. It would have had the same effect and saved me the $25 to see the movie, the cost of the trip into town and the cost of the treats.

Before you demand my gay card, I will admit that Channing Tatum is extremely good looking and talented. His dance moves were awesome.  But I see those same moves on a weekly basis when I watch So You Think You Can Dance and I get to hear Mary Murphy scream about the arrival of her hot tamale train to boot!

I think what disappointed me most about Magic Mike was the fact that here you have a group of hot male dancers and not one of them is gay.  In the movie, that is, because Matt Bomer has come out in real life. The story is a morality tale of how bad the lure of the wild life and drugs are if you become a male stripper. It would be a more interesting tale if instead of male strippers who have unknown backgrounds, one of the strippers was a Safeway bag boy and one of the others a nebbish book keeper.

For me, Magic Mike was not a great movie.  It wasn’t even a good movie.  Normally I would complain that it was two hours I’ll never get back, but I won’t because of one redeeming feature: I was there with the love of my life.  He’s my very own, personal, “Magic Mike”.