2012's "Magic Mike" began life as a modest $7-million character drama set within the world of male entertainers—loosely based on star Channing Tatum's (2014's "Foxcatcher") experiences prior to hitting it big as an actor—and ended up breaking out as a $167-million box-office juggernaut to which grown women and gay men flocked. Audiences came for the tight abs and gyrating pelvises, but under the directorial guidance of Stephen Soderbergh the film actually had an involving story to tell, one about power, opportunity, and knowing when it's time to hang up the G-string for longer-lasting career goals and aspirations. "Magic Mike XXL" has no such higher ambitions, playing more like a 2-hour reunion TV movie of a 1980s sitcom where the cast gets back together sans laugh track for a getaway vacation romp. It's light-hearted, a little lame, and doesn't pretend to hide that it is a blatant money grab. It also, sadly, is only about half as titillating.
This time around, exotic Tampa club Xquisite is no more and Matthew McConaughey's straight-shooting owner Dallas has strutted off to Macau with Alex Pettyfer's popular, wet-behind-the-ears younger dancer Adam. Also nowhere to be found is luminous standout Cody Horn, as Adam's protective older sister Brooke, whose complicated burgeoning relationship with longtime-stripper Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) was the heart and soul of the first film. Three years have passed since Mike walked away from his booty-shaking former life, and in that time he has moved in with Brooke and started his own furniture business. Still smarting from a failed marriage proposal, he reconnects with his former male-dancer friends—the impossibly blue-eyed Ken (Matt Bomer), the well-endowed Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello), frozen yogurt upstarter Tito (Adam Rodriguez), and aging Tarzan (Kevin Nash)—and decides to join them on a road trip up the east coast en route to the 2015 Stripper Convention in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This one last hurrah for the so-called Kings of Tampa will be paved with misadventures, flirtations, and more than a couple suggestive body-baring detours.
See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review
