Better Never Than Late on "Magic Mike"

This past Friday for date night my wife chose the movie "Magic Mike". I have never seen the movie before. She said she may or may not have, she could not fully remember. She did say that she thought she might have watched it at a party with all ladies, but she could not fully remember. We figured Friday night was as good a time as any, so we watched it on HBO Max. It was free, so that was nice too.

This was not the movie that I expected. I assumed it was going to be a good, energetic and fast paced movie about strippers. And coming off "Zola", which is a tremendous movie, I assumed I was in for another solid viewing. Well, it was not for me. And it had nothing to do with the fact that it was about male strippers. In fact the best parts of the movie, the parts I enjoyed was when they were at the strip club. They did not show any nudity, and seeing the way these actors danced and grabbed the attendants was pretty cool, but also stripping, of any kind, makes me uncomfortable. But there were only a few moments in the movie where they talked about stripping or did their thing. The other part of the movie, about 60 percent of it, was all the story developing and the lives of the characters. And it was mad boring. There was only so much I could watch of Channing Tatum going to work at his construction job. I also did not care, at all, about the relationship he built with his buddy's sister. It was pretty dull. The stuff with his buddy, played by Alex Ptefyer, was pretty blah as well. I read that the two of them did not get along on set, I have read quite a few things about Ptefyer being a headache, and that totally showed on screen. They truly seemed to hate one another, even though they were supposed to be friends. I also found all of the scenes outside of the random clubs to be super boring. Even when you get a glimpse into how Tatum gets people to come to the club, to see him work outside of work, it just simply had no oomph. It was very blah.

Honestly, the only stuff that worked was the club, and a few of the guys who worked there. I will give Tatum credit, even if I was not into the movie, you can see that this dude can act. He did a very solid job of being, basically himself. This may have been his first time taking a real shot at doing drama, and he did a good job. Joe Mangiello was funny and goofy, as his character should have been. Anyone called "Big Dick Rick" should never, ever take themselves seriously. And he did not take it too seriously. Ptefyer was lame, but I do not like that dude. Matt Bomer and the other dude I did not recognize were fine as side characters. But Matthew McCanoughey was the draw. He was having the best time in this role, and it showed. He was out there. He was wild. He was silly. And it was perfect. He was so wild and crazy, and much like Tatum, I feel like he did a good job of basically playing himself.

All in all the movie just did not work for me. It was too much Steven Soderbergh. He is a very, very good director. But this movie just seems like it is not something he should do. He is much better at doing harder drama, and when it comes to comedy, he should just stick with "Ocean's 11". "Magic Mike" is just not what I thought it was going to be. It wasn't the fun and silly movie I was hoping for. It took itself way, way too seriously. I do not get the hype around this movie, but that is just my opinion. I'd pass if you haven't seen it yet.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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Let's Revisit "Tropic Thunder"

About a week ago my wife and I watched "Tropic Thunder" for the first time in years. Let’s discuss.

Right off the bat, this movie is hilarious. I loved it the first time I watched it, I remember watching it several times afterward and loving it and I laughed just as hard watching it this most recent time. It is a very funny, very well written movie. It is filled with jokes. It is like watching an episode of "30 Rock". There are jokes seemingly every thirty seconds to a minute. The cast is stellar and they all do such a good job portraying different types of actors/musicians. Jack Black is awesome, Ben Stiller is perfect, Brandon T Jackson has some of the best lines, Jay Baruchel is great as the young up and comer and Robert Downey Jr is superb. He should've been nominated for an Oscar. Even guys with smaller roles, like Steve Coogan, Bill Hader, Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey and Danny McBride shine. This movie is filled with great actors and they are all up to the task. The movie holds up.

After watching it, my wife and I had a long talk trying to decide if this movie could be made today. "Tropic Thunder" came out in 2008, thirteen years ago. A lot has changed since then. We have gone through some shit as a country. There have been some major things that have happened, and the world is not a better place. We are currently living in a pandemic, which hasn't happened for 100 years. The former "administration" is to blame for a lot of it. The new administration is doing their best to try and get back to "normal", but they have their work cut out for them. So when looking back at this movie, and after a few weeks of thought, I do not think this movie would be able to get made today.

I have already said that Robert Downey Jr is exceptional in this movie. He takes on the role of the super committed actor to the next level. He is simply perfect. He is also in black face for most of this movie. Now, they make a very clear joke of this very early on in the movie. They point out that he is such a committed actor that he had his skin dyed for the role. And when shooting the movie, the back and forth between RDJ and Jackson is some of the funniest stuff in the whole movie. It is comedy gold. I do think "Tropic Thunder" does a good job of showing how utterly absurd and crazy some actors can be, but something like black face has been, and always will be, very, very, very wrong. It is disrespectful and not cool. There is also the whole backstory of Stiller's character doing a movie called "Simple Jack". "Simple Jack" is about a mentally handicapped man, and Stiller plays the part for laughs. And it works. Hell, the whole conversation between him and RDJ talking about the movie is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a movie. But I cringed watching him do the "Simple Jack" stuff. I laughed, but every laugh was met with me or my wife or both of us kind of feeling bad for laughing at the scenes with "Simple Jack". Again, the role is played for laughs, it is in this movie to show how ridiculous some actors take some of their roles, but it is so very offensive. It is wrong. It is tough to watch and you feel bad for laughing after you do. Everything else in the movie is okay. Jackson's backstory of being gay is not offensive at all, and it ends very happily for him. Baruchel is funny the whole time. Jack Black is goofy and silly and awesome. All the stuff with Tom Cruise is very funny. Danny McBride has some great one liners. But if this movie was to be made today they would have to take away two of the biggest jokes in the whole thing. It cannot be done. But that may be a good thing. I am not mad at it at all in fact.

"Tropic Thunder" should stay in the early 2000's. I'm over all the remakes and reboots. "Tropic Thunder" will always be a movie I will laugh at when I watch it, but there is absolutely no way it could, nor should it be made now.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.