Guys, want to really get in your girl’s good graces this weekend?
Take her to “Magic Mike XXL.” Yes, seriously.
To be sure, no guy-starring flick since “Brokeback Mountain” has had guys so jittery at the box office. But the bro-mo-phobia surrounding the movie is more than a little misplaced. The first movie, about a group of male strippers, was directed by Steven Soderbergh, former indie darling behind “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” and the decidedly cool “Oceans 11” movies.
And though while the first “Mike” wasn’t the sausage fest everyone thought, it wasn’t a particularly great movie, though its success, along with “21 Jump Street,” put the previously much-maligned Channing Tatum back on the A-list.
“XXL,” though, seems to be embracing the beefcake rep its predecessor built, with trailers that encourage leering while Tatum and company grind away cartoonishly, eliciting equal amounts of seat-squirming from women, and eye-rolling from men.
Now will you enjoy “Magic Mike XXL”? Who knows? Maybe there is some level of enjoyment for a straight male, or maybe this one is made for the ladies. But look at it this way: go to the cinema with your girl, bite the bullet and sit through this with her, and you may enjoy a payoff of your own later on.
