(Not) Magic Mike

While reading some of the reviews of Joss Whedon's smash hit The Avengers, I wondered if some of the film critics out there completely missed the point of the movie. The Avengers simply wasn't made for stuffy, snobby film connoisseurs. It was made for fanboys and nerds. It was made for average Joes who were looking for a little escapism and spectacle. Was it a great film? It depends on how you look at it. If you were an 11 year old boy, it was probably the best movie ever. If you were one of those film snobs who would rather watch The English Patient than sit through another noisy blockbuster, it probably wasn't your cup of tea. The important thing to remember here is that it wasn't supposed to be.

Films, like most art forms, are designed to appeal to a certain audience. Keep this in mind.

So, I went out and saw a movie called Magic Mike yesterday. Magic Mike is about male strippers, and let's just go ahead and establish one thing: I am not this film's target demographic. I'm sure about this. While I wasn't uncomfortable watching it, most of the time I was sitting in the theatre just waiting for it to be over. It was not unlike a trip to the DMV, in that respect.

I found myself analyzing the movie, though, and as I watched it I kept wondering who the intended target market was.

Advertisements for the movie make it seem like the plot would revolve around dance sequences wherein guys with visible abdominal muscles would gyrate and wiggle for extended periods of time, much to the delight of people who are into half-naked dancing dudes. I was expecting a hyper-stylized male revue of a movie, with little focus on plot or character development, based on the commercials and previews I had seen.

However, I was aware of one thing that made it hard for me to believe this movie would be some kind of fun romp through repressed lady fantasyland...

Steven Soderbergh directed Magic Mike. Soderbergh is a weird and unpredictable animal in the film world. On the one hand, he directs stuff like Ocean's Eleven, which was totally fun. On the other hand, he directs stuff like Haywire, which was a colossal pile of shit. Haywire was marketed as an action movie, starring real-life professional fighter Gina Carano. It was supposed to be a spy thriller, with an emphasis on ass-kicking fight scenes. Soderbergh thought it would be a good idea to take a film that had all of the perfect ingredients for an action film and use them to craft a pseudo-dramatic, disjointed mess. It wasn't an action movie. It wasn't really a spy movie. It wasn't a drama. It wasn't anything, really. It wasn't funny, or smart, or exciting. It just kind of went nowhere.

This is exactly what was wrong with Magic Mike. It had the perfect ingredients to be summer fun for women. Channing Tatum isn't going to win any awards for acting (ever.), but he's a good looking guy with tremendous talents as a dancer. He's eye candy for the ladies, and that's exactly what women are coming to this movie to see. People are expecting to see Tatum and Matthew McConaughey (who essentially plays himself in this film) and that one dude from True Blood take off their clothes, expose their chiseled midsections, and wiggle.

Unfortunately, this isn't what Magic Mike gives to its audience. It plods along without direction or purpose, at times wanting to be a drama, or a romantic comedy, or an exploitative skin flick, but it never commits to being any of these things. It tries (half-assedly) to be too many things, and it ends up disappointing on every level.

Because Magic Mike won't commit to a style, it ends up void of all fun, and is a meaningless film. I don't mean meaningless in a good way, either. If it had been an hour and a half of Channing Tatum dancing, that would have appeared meaningless, but it would have delivered some stupid fun for a specific audience, which makes it meaningful on some level.

I can't believe I was disappointed in Magic Mike for failing to be what it was advertised to be, but that's how I feel. I went to see Haywire expecting to see an action movie and left the theatre wanting to punch Steven Soderbergh in the throat. I imagine there are several women who are similarly disappointed in Magic Mike. 

There is a ton of highly sexualized entertainment out there for guys. I'm talking about quality stuff. The entertainment industry knows what guys are into, and they deliver. The entertainment market is saturated with fantastic violent and sexual guy-oriented books and movies. Can we get a little equality for the ladies? I read "50 Shades of Grey" and was disappointed in the shitty writing and laughably pathetic characters. I watched Magic Mike and felt bad for the ladies who paid to go chill out at the theatre for a couple of hours and watch some good looking dudes play into their fantasies. Is some decent, high-quality entertainment too much for them to ask for?