I know that it is so easy to look at the poster for Magic Mike XXL and just think this is a movie for the ladies to have a wild and crazy night with. While that may partly be true, Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL are fun comedies that even we guys can have a lot of fun with as they are ultimately movies about bros being friends and men trying to move on with their lives.
How to Download Magic Mike XXL
You can download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. Check out also the sequel – Magic Mike’s Last Dance.
The Movie Review
This movie takes place a few years after the first Magic Mike. Mike is no longer a stripper and trying to make a go of it with his furniture business which is not going as well as he had hoped. Mike is a very likable character, Channing Tatum is just such a likable actor that he is impossible not to root for and the fact he is ripped to shreds is not going to hurt his likability with the ladies either.
Mike gets a call that leads him to believe that the manager of his strip troupe Dallas has died. He meets his dancer buddies and finds out that Dallas is not dead, but he has dumped them and moved on to new things. Mike has a good time chatting it up with the guys and they start to talk about old times and they let Mike in on their idea.
Turns out that there is some kind of stripper convention/competition happening in Florida and the guys see this as one last hurrah for their strip troupe. Mike eventually comes around and the guys jump in a Fr-Yo van and start to make their way to Florida to take part in the competition.
The best parts of Magic Mike XXL for me are when the guys are in the van and just shooting the shit with each other. This leads to a hilarious scene at a gas station where Ritchie does a strip dance to a Backstreet Boys song to impress the cashier. The movie is at its best when the guys are being guys and just having fun together.
While the fun and games is good stuff, to be fair, Magic Mike XXL does have more depth than a movie about male strippers has any right to be. You see, each of the guys is getting older and realize that they need to move on from stripping and enter the next stage of their lives, it adds a great deal of depth to each character and makes you like them even more.
I am pretty sure that there is no one in the world that would say Magic Mike XXL is an award-winning piece of cinema. However, the movie is still a fun watch and I feel that while there is a lot of silliness here, it does also have a lot of heart and most of these guys are impossible not to like.
Out of the three Magic Mike movies, Magic Mike XXL is the best one, but you do need to have seen the first one to appreciate this. I feel that there is better humor here and the comradery with the guys feels more natural too. This and the first movie make for a great double feature for a date night, but I would not suggest giving the third one the time of day!
