Of all the possible career moves for a rising movie star, or the possible critical-commercial sweet spots for a filmmaker, I’m not sure that “male-stripper movie” would have occurred to many people before 2012, when Channing Tatum and Steven Soderbergh delivered Magic Mike. But once they did, the idea seemed so obvious: In one fell swoop, they breathed new life into Hollywood’s ancient “stripper with a heart of . . .” clichés, offered female moviegoers the chance to experience the fun of a male revue with a bigger hunk in a far less seedy venue, and let the critics speckle their reviews with commentary about masculinity, class, gender roles, capitalism, the body, the whole Left-academic list.
Of course, to pull off this trifecta the movie itself had to be at least okay, which is pretty much how I’d describe the original Magic Mike. Based loosely on Tatum’s own college-age experience as an exotic dancer, it had the novelty of shirtless-male dance moves, a gleeful echt–Matthew McConaughey performance that helped launch the larger McConnaissance, and a plausible seediness to its Tampa locale, which Soderbergh amplified by filming the outdoors through an orange-ish lens, like a spray-tan on the world.
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