"Dance seeks no meaning for its desires."
Hello everyone!
Aka, you can probably get me to do just about anything you might want IF you're close enough to me and we're good enough friends for you to try it on for size.
This past end of the week, one of my best friends messaged me about going to the cinema.
Now, ordinarily, I'm all for it, and it's never an issue. However, I've been in this situation before and ended up going to see the first 50 Shades of Grey movie.
I kind of figured it had to be something along those same lines, and I was partly right.
Seeing as I do consider myself a good friend, however, and because I really did need to get out of the house (my sister was home to babysit the parents, as I like to call it, though really all they did was watch a movie themselves), I agreed to go. And it wasn't bad!
I do have thoughts, but it wasn't too bad. I was taken to see Magic Mike's Last Dance; and if you know me, then you know that I don't usually watch movies like this.
I'm reasonably sure I don't have that many links to attach to this post, but if I find any I'll definitely do it. That'll be a rare unicorn though!
Years back, I'm convinced my friends and I went to see Magic Mike together in cinema, because again - this isn't a movie I'd pick for myself. Channing Tatum, as much as I'm sure he's a lovely guy and all, does absolutely nothing for me, and neither did any of the other guys from the original movie back in ... gosh, was it 2012? MAN time flies!
Anyway, stripper Mike has since had a sequel, Magic Mike XXL, which I never saw, but the thing with these movies is the plot doesn't really hinge that much on plot, so you can go see movie three without too much issue, honestly.
It starts with Mike's furniture store kind of going under, so now he's sort of swimming aimlessly and taking bartender gigs. It's at the last one that he meets Max (Hayek), a wealthy philanthropist who, I'll be honest, has the weirdest introduction in a movie I've ever seen. That first moment between her and Mike is so ridiculous awkward that you're wondering whether they got soulless clones for Tatum and Hayek to act it out.
Anyway, she asks for Mike after all is said and done, because a good friend of hers had recognized him as a stripper, and Max buys herself a dance, even more awkwardly than that first hello between them was.
She's full of bravado how it won't have a happy ending - and then they end up in bed together. Classic.
Then, she flips the switch on the personality of a wooden plank to suddenly becoming this chaotic, all over the place hamster, as she decides that Mike will go with her to London for a month.
Yes, SHE decides this. Make no mistake, Mike has no intention of going across the pond and isn't sold on whatever it is she's selling, as she isn't selling him much to begin with. Don't let the movie tagline fool you where it says 'she lures him to London with an offer he can't refuse', because that's a lie. Max tells him nothing about why they're headed to London other than it's her home, and no they won't be having sex again.
She'll surprise him with why he's actually there, but until then, he shouldn't worry.
I will say, at least they get him some better-fitting clothes once in London, and we finally learn she wants to put on a show, changing a boring ass play called Isabel Ascendant into a strip show to get back at her husband for cheating on her with his assistant. And oh, yes, they're in the middle of a divorce, and Mike will choreograph and direct said show.
If you think that feels bonkers, wait until they start pulling dancers together, because they decide they need dancers to turn into strippers, rather than the other way around. We never actually get the names of any of these dancers and they usually move around as a unit with no individual personality, so really they're about as interesting as the backdrop.
Mike gets to meet Zadie, Max's adopted daughter, who's incredibly jaded towards the world and writing a novel, but the two of them get along okay, and honestly? It feels as if the movie was trying to make a point that Mike brings some fresh air into the stilted British household, making them all come together a bit more, but it doesn't nail it as well as they were hoping to do and so it just kind of hangs there in between with lots of promise and little delivery.
There's a few issues with the show that they overcome during the course of the movie, most pressing being they need to get permission for some changes to the stage, for which they put on a bit of a flashmob to convince the lady to sign the papers.
Then they still get threatened with a shut-down because of a third of an inch somewhere, and Max finally learns from her husband that there's a clause somewhere in the prenup about her besmirching the family name; if she does it, she's penniless and he's only looking out for her.
Now here's what I don't get: technically speaking, Max is using her maiden name again, not her husband's. And the show she's putting on isn't ACTUALLY saying anything against his family. I suppose one could certainly read between the lines, but even the best lawyers would have hell of a time convincing a judge that it was all meant to bring the family down - a plot that actually also never really goes anywhere to begin with.
Mostly, this movie seems to try to be a love story between Mike and Max, but given their first interaction was as it was, then there was the dance, then sex, then Max just ... stomping all over Mike and making sure it's her way or the highway, I never got the feeling there was really any LOVE between them.
Mike just happens to be convenient in that he was teaching Max she needs to finish what she started, particularly when she says it's over, but he's like nah bish, it ain't over til I say it's over, then gets the show finished over the weekend to run on Sunday evening.
While he's busy with that, Max is busy stealing his bedding and pillows from his room because they smell like him and crying into them in the most dramatic move of all dramatic moves, though thankfully her daughter and chauffeur get her out of bed and to the theater for the actual performance where we get some of the dancing you might think you'll see when watching a Magic Mike movie.
Channing even takes the stage in a rain-soaked dance with a ballerina that reminds me a lot of his opening act of that last dance in Step Up, if I'm being honest with you. And overall, this entire movie was more Step Up than Magic Mike.
ANYWAY, the new Isabel Ascendant is a success, everyone loves the strip-tease thing, and Mike and Max kiss and proclaim their love against the backdrop of Max explaining she's now broke and happy as a clam.
And off they ride into the sunset, I guess?
Honestly, this movie isn't BAD, but it IS confusing and all over the place. There's a lot happening in it and not much comes to actual fruition, plots don't really pay off, and I wasn't sold on the Max/Mike chemistry because she was much too neurotic and he was a doormat. I will say that it was an interesting move by the screenwriter(s), however, to always have him answer any of her direct questions with a question of his own.
That's very 40 year old virgin, and I kinda approve lol, it at least made everything fun.
I feel like this movie set goals for itself and tried to reach them, but failed just short of the finish line. Mike going to London and putting on the show seems more Max steamrolling him than Mike (though he does enjoy it in the end); the Zadie/Max thing was definitely there, but not explored enough; the husband and the family thing was sort of explained, but not delivered in any decisive way, and there wasn't really a whole lot of Magic Mike for it to be called Magic Mike, really.
I'm thinking it fell prey to the mindset of today, because I don't remember a whole lot of 'may I touch you?' in that first movie that premiered to pretty big success. It feels like they were going to do a pretty risqué movie, but had to scale back out of fear audiences would be scandalized.
Newsflash: it's a movie about strippers. I'm reasonably sure anyone who doesn't know what it is they're going to watch is really at their own fault.
So, yeah. Mixed feelings, because it feels unfinished, or hastily finished at least, and I think it could have been actually good if there had been just one or two things that were executed differently.
xx
*images and video not mine
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