Format: Film
Starring: Channing Tatum
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

I didn’t really know what I expected to see when I went to the theater for the midnight showing of Magic Mike. The lobby was crammed with 40-something housewives all charged up cause they were out of the house, young guys being dragged by their girlfriends like lambs to slaughter, and a bunch of 20 year old sluts who were drunk as shit, yelling “It’s girls night!” But seriously, I’m here to see a movie… about male strippers…. directed by Steven Soderbergh. Yeah, cause those things go together about as well as mayonnaise and bananas.

Magic Mike is the story of a charming 30 year stripper name Mike (played by the undeniably gorgeous Channing Tatum) who takes a young “kid” Adam, (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and shows him the way of stripping, romancing the ladies, and getting “easy money.”

As the lights in the theater went down, the amount of screaming and cat-calling increased. Of course, because this is a movie marketed at a primarily females there is an obligatory shot of Mike’s naked ass in the frist 5 minutes of the movie. (Also on a side note, there’s plenty of boobs in the movie, so the guys who got coerced into going are placated).

The first hour or so is exactly what people came there for, the male strippers. The crowd screamed their faces off as the motley crew of “Big Dick” Richie (Joe Manganiello), Tito (Adam Rodriguez), Ken (Matt Bomer) and Tarzan (Kevin Nash – Google photos of him if you don’t know who he is) led by their fearless captain Dallas (Matthew McConaughey in assless chaps) puts on their show. “The Kid” gets wrapped up in their world of quick cash, partying, and lady-sexing.

This is all fine and dandy until a breaking point where everyone in the audience starts to feel a little uncomfortable. You’ve been watching guys thrust their pelvises in your face for 60 solid minutes in a theater full of strangers, yet its here that the plot actually starts to develop. Obviously, Mike falls in love with “The Kid’s” sister Brooke (Cody Horn), and the next hour was actually the better part of the movie, as the characters begin to take shape and have emotions rather than just flinging their ding-dong’s at the screen. “The Kid” gets involved in some bad shit with Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias) the club’s resident DJ and drug dealer, and Mike toils to become a better man and “not just a stripper”. The dialogue gets a little mumbly and intense, and with a theater full of chattering people looking for the next pelvic thrust, a little of it was lost on them. However, I won’t reveal the surprising conclusion for anyone who is planning on going and actually watching the entire movie.

As far as a take home message from this movie, CHANNING. TATUM. IS. A. FUCKING. BADASS. DANCER. Not only is he the hottest man alive (P.S. ladies, he’s 100 times hotter than any other movie you’ve seen him in), but he really is a fantastic dancer. I’m not sure he’s gotten the whole “acting” thing down yet, but he’s obviously been trying. Olivia Munn plays Mike’s booty-call girl, and she can’t act her way out of a paper bag, but she’s there for the hotness factor as well. There’s less of the supporting cast of dancers than I imagined there would be, but they do all have quality stripping scenes. The most surprising part of this movie is that there is a plot behind the “lets make a movie about male strippers” idea and that it is actually good. I’m pretty sure the housewives in the crowd were just looking for the movie as a visual supplementation to their copy of 50 Shades of Grey but I found it to be an entertaining 110 minutes of movie going experience.

Rating: 8 out of 10 crumpled singles in a g-string man thong

(Also, when did Matthew McConaughey get to be old as fuck?)