Movie Review: Magic Mike (+trailer)
Think the blockbuster mummy-porn book, 50 Shades of Grey, on celluloid.
Magic Mike is a little light on storyline but more than makes up for it with muscles, abs and naked male flesh - or so the predominant female audience indicated.
The oohs and aahs were right on time accompanying the appropriate gyrations by the popular young Hollywood hunk Channing Tatum throughout the movie.
Tatum is Magic Mike, a stripper by night and an entrepreneur by day.
Mike says he is only stripping to make the good money he needs to pursue his real career - furniture designer.
He is the supreme performer and he knows exactly how to push the buttons of his adoring female public.
When Mike crosses paths with Adam (Alex Pettyfer), he takes the drifting youngster under his wing.
He brings Adam into the stripping world as a way of giving him some money and direction in his life.
Mike shows him the ropes and the ways of women and the money soon starts to flow.
But it is Adam's sister - Brooke (Cody Horn) - who is to play a big part in Mike's life.
She offers the stability and realism that Mike never sees when he's up on stage doing his stuff.
She makes him question the direction his life is taking and the sort of life Mike is encouraging.
It is a storyline that could have been developed a little further at the expense of the many stripping scenes that dominated the screen.
But then that is what the audience wanted and what left the women leaving the cinemas with awfully big smiles on their faces.
Magic Mike
(R16), 125 minutes
Rating: 2.5 / 5 Stars
