I think I said something similiar in my review of Haywire, but I'm utterly convinced Steven Soderbergh is just screwing with us now. Basically it feels like he wakes up in the morning and thinks 'What concept can I base a film around that will on the surface sound ridiculous, but because I'm so awesome it'll work.'
Lets look at his filmography since his last 'conventional' hollywood film Oceans 13:
Che - a five plus hour two part epic about a latin american revolutionary, which from all accounts has very little action
The Girlfriend Experience - A film about a high class escort, starring a porn star, that features no sex and is really an allegory for post financial crisis economy.
The Informant - take a pretty dry story about price-fixing in the corn syrup market and turn it into a madcap farce
The last time i saw michael gregg - haven't seen it, haven't heard of it
Contagion - A pandemic film treated as almost a documentary, whose main bit of marketing was hyping the fact that Gwenyth Paltrow dies in first reel.
Haywire - An action film completely carried by a MMA star.
All of these films were at least compelling, and some even were elevated by his self-imposed constraints. So now we come to Magic Mike. A film about male strippers based star Channing Tatum's real life experiences. Sounds nuts right? Of course I had to see it.
Anyway its actually pretty good. Soderbergh makes the smart choice of playing everything straight, and treating the male stripping game like any other job. The sort of ridiculousness of the situation is acknowledged, but not dwelt upon, and everything is dealt with in a very matter of fact manner. The film is a little long, and the drug detour at then end could have been expunged, but I'd say the film definitely deserves most of the praise and success its been getting.
But that's all secondary. There is one giant reason to see this - the McConaughey. He plays the strip club owner Dallas, and never before has there been a more perfect union of actor and character. He's amazing. There's some bongos, call backs to Dazed and Confused, and the sort of smarmy charm that he's known for. The character has a bust of himself in his house, and spends most of the movie shirtless and smirking. I'm really not doing it justice.
There's this:
And this:
And oh yeah, this:
Seriously, every time he's on screen I was just smiling like an idiot. This man deserves a Best Supporting Actor nod. You think I'm kidding.
One other thing. I saw the film in a 90% full theater, most of which was composed of groups of 3 and 4 women. Who were not there for the economic subtext in the film. The row behind me was half in the bag before it even started. Definitely an interesting viewing experience.
Update: Forgot to mention this in the original post, but there is one element of the film I need to discuss. This is going to be me going into accounting nerd out mode just to warn you. So Channing Tatum's Magic Mike is stripping and working a bunch of other jobs to get enough funding to start a custom furniture business (this actually plays less ridiculous than it sounds). He's actually saved up a nice chuck of change (about 13 grand), which he wants to use as collateral to get a small business loan from a bank. Only the bank won't give him a loan since he doesn't have any credit history. While the film wants you to feel like he's getting screwed, I can't help but figure this is a little self-inflicted. Basically rather than keeping all the cash in, I don't know, a bank account, he has it all in a wall safe in his house. Now I get that maybe he wants to avoid the taxes, but by not establishing his net worth in a verifiable account, and filing accurate tax returns, he's obviously going to reduce the chances of getting a loan. He should have been depositing everything, generating financial statements, making business purchases with credit cards, and filing accurate tax returns. This would increase his odds of getting a loan since it would not only increase his credit score, but establish his ability to pay in a manner more substantial than "Hey I got a bunch of singles in house, give me a loan." I'm just saying.
Lets look at his filmography since his last 'conventional' hollywood film Oceans 13:
Che - a five plus hour two part epic about a latin american revolutionary, which from all accounts has very little action
The Girlfriend Experience - A film about a high class escort, starring a porn star, that features no sex and is really an allegory for post financial crisis economy.
The Informant - take a pretty dry story about price-fixing in the corn syrup market and turn it into a madcap farce
The last time i saw michael gregg - haven't seen it, haven't heard of it
Contagion - A pandemic film treated as almost a documentary, whose main bit of marketing was hyping the fact that Gwenyth Paltrow dies in first reel.
Haywire - An action film completely carried by a MMA star.
All of these films were at least compelling, and some even were elevated by his self-imposed constraints. So now we come to Magic Mike. A film about male strippers based star Channing Tatum's real life experiences. Sounds nuts right? Of course I had to see it.
Anyway its actually pretty good. Soderbergh makes the smart choice of playing everything straight, and treating the male stripping game like any other job. The sort of ridiculousness of the situation is acknowledged, but not dwelt upon, and everything is dealt with in a very matter of fact manner. The film is a little long, and the drug detour at then end could have been expunged, but I'd say the film definitely deserves most of the praise and success its been getting.
But that's all secondary. There is one giant reason to see this - the McConaughey. He plays the strip club owner Dallas, and never before has there been a more perfect union of actor and character. He's amazing. There's some bongos, call backs to Dazed and Confused, and the sort of smarmy charm that he's known for. The character has a bust of himself in his house, and spends most of the movie shirtless and smirking. I'm really not doing it justice.
There's this:
And this:
And oh yeah, this:
One other thing. I saw the film in a 90% full theater, most of which was composed of groups of 3 and 4 women. Who were not there for the economic subtext in the film. The row behind me was half in the bag before it even started. Definitely an interesting viewing experience.
Update: Forgot to mention this in the original post, but there is one element of the film I need to discuss. This is going to be me going into accounting nerd out mode just to warn you. So Channing Tatum's Magic Mike is stripping and working a bunch of other jobs to get enough funding to start a custom furniture business (this actually plays less ridiculous than it sounds). He's actually saved up a nice chuck of change (about 13 grand), which he wants to use as collateral to get a small business loan from a bank. Only the bank won't give him a loan since he doesn't have any credit history. While the film wants you to feel like he's getting screwed, I can't help but figure this is a little self-inflicted. Basically rather than keeping all the cash in, I don't know, a bank account, he has it all in a wall safe in his house. Now I get that maybe he wants to avoid the taxes, but by not establishing his net worth in a verifiable account, and filing accurate tax returns, he's obviously going to reduce the chances of getting a loan. He should have been depositing everything, generating financial statements, making business purchases with credit cards, and filing accurate tax returns. This would increase his odds of getting a loan since it would not only increase his credit score, but establish his ability to pay in a manner more substantial than "Hey I got a bunch of singles in house, give me a loan." I'm just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment