[yasr_overall_rating]
Three years after Mike bowed out of the stripper life at the top of his game, he and the remaining Kings of Tampa hit the road to Myrtle Beach to put on one last blow-out performance.
MM is my new BFF. I realize that I am writing in childlike babblespeak but that is only because my tongue has not found the proper verbiage to convey my thoughts into words. Still reeling from the culmination of events that Warner Brothers coordinated to introduce “Magic Mike XXL” to Dallas, I am torn between deciding whether the seductive pre-show provided by the appetizing Men of LaBare was just as filling as the entrée, “Magic Mike XXL.” Imagine my displeasure for having to wait in the press line because it was congested by a traffic jam of several muscled, meat hunks in breakaway pants wearing “Magic Mike XXL” tee-shirts…..It’s great they weren’t competing for my taste buds though, and that is a good thing because for the life of me I would not have been able to choose between pre or post delirium. So about the movie…..
Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) starts off innocently enough meticulously going over the details of his new business with his one and only employee. For the last three years, he has made a personal commitment to ensuring that his business venture will be successful enough so he doesn’t have to return to his previous lifestyle of stripping. After a monotonous day of dealing with construction managers, Mike receives a notice stating that Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), his previous stripper boss has passed away and his presence would be welcomed at the wake. Suited up with a sympathy card, Mike arrives to the listed address only to be physically thrown into a swimming pool by his ex stripper buddies who couldn’t think of a better way to get Mike to hook up with them after they truly had been deserted by Dallas who had walked away from the business as well. Unintrigued by the offer to rejoin “The Kings Of Tampa” on their final trip to the Stripper Convention in Myrtle Beach, Mike reminisces about the good times, refuses the offer and returns home to prepare for the next day’s work. After returning to his workshop to cut steel and dabble with drilling, Mike keys up the radio and when ‘Pony’ by Ginuine comes on, Mike digresses and slowly converts from a grind here and there with his tools, to a full- fledged stripper show, which is precisely what the theatre needed to erupt again.
The next morning Mike shows up at the Fro Yo food truck with his suitcase to begin a serious road trip to Myrtle Beach with ”The Kings Of Tampa”. The trip becomes emotionally charged when each member of the group, Ken (Matt Bomer), Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello), Tarzan (Kevin Nash), Tito (Adam Rodriguez) and Tobias (Gabriel Inglesias), airs their personal laundry as well as their anger with Mike for leaving the group three years prior. An accident along the way that almost totals the food truck, and lands Tobias in the hospital with a concussion, is the breaking point when the group decides to leave the past in the past and move forward to the convention. Having lost their Emcee, Tobias, to a 2-day stay in the hospital, Mike is forced to crawl back to his previous partner Rome (Jada Pinkett-Smith) to get a replacement. Rome plays her role to the hilt as she makes Mike earn his way back into her good graces by entertaining her own hand-picked entertainers in her new business venture.
Among the crowd pleasers and pleasant surprises are Michael Strahan and Stephen (Twitch) Boss (Malik) who join the down and dirty crowd with the latest and greatest seductive dance/stripper moves that leave the audience screaming for more. Magic Mike is officially back in stripper mode after winning the approval of Rome’s entire group. Just when your heartbeat settles back to an acceptable rate, Nancy Davidson (Andie McDowell) enters the picture as a Southern socialite whose deprived sexual appetite is rejuvenated by her daughter Megan’s (Carrie Anne Hunt) friends who thought she would never understand what they did for a living. This hilarious exchange between them gives Mike and his pals yet another challenge, leaving the ladies begging for more while Richie’s individual contribution scores the keys to Andie’s Bentley for a joy ride around town. Finally arriving at the convention, Magic Mike finds that without Dallas, the strippers have no place in the completion until Rome pulls a rabbit out of the hat scoring points for a previous bond with the convention’s coordinator. Although the meeting was very awkward, it proved to be just what Mike needed to get in, take over and claim top honors.
Director Gregory Jacobs did a fantastic job of re-weaving an impressionable story to account for non-returning members of the original group of strippers in the first Magic Mike movie in 2012. Not a beat was missed in this exciting, adrenalin-filled two hours of relentless, sexually-charged entertainment that barely gives you enough time to catch your breath or anything else that falls in front, underneath or behind you! The insanely talented Channing Tatum proves once again that he is multi-talented and magically magnificent!
In theaters July 1st
