Movie review: ‘Magic Mike XXL’

Delivered with all the subtlety of a crotch to the face, Magic Mike XXL is one of the most cynical, shallow sequels in recent memory.

Watching the film’s predecessor, 2012’s Magic Mike, it’s clear a follow-up is totally unnecessary.

The story of Mike’s (Channing Tatum) tutelage of “The Kid” (Alex Pettyfer) and the clash between Mike and freewheeling boss Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) is resolved, as are the handful of subplots.

But Mike got a lot of dollar bills stuffed into its cinematic G-string: 167 million of them, to be exact (against a budget of just $7 million).

Therefore, we find ourselves continuing the adventures of the “Kings of Tampa,” this time hitting the road to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and a national convention for male strip — er, entertainers.

XXL picks up three years later, albeit with a few glaring absences (McConaughey, having won an Oscar between films, didn’t return, and neither did Pettyfer, with whom Tatum reportedly feuded, or Cody Horn, Tatum’s love interest from the first film).

Those missing are dispatched with ham-handed lines calling attention to the actors’ disappearance, rather than smoothing it over.

Most everyone else from Magic Mike — Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash and Matt Bomer are back, as is comedian Gabriel Iglesias and Adam Rodriguez — piles into a variety of vehicles for the journey from Tampa, where Mike now has his successful handmade-furniture business, to Myrtle Beach, where the guys, all of whom repeatedly describe the road trip as “the last ride,” crave one more chance for bare-chested glory before thousands of screaming, money-flinging women.

The first Mike installment, directed by Steven Soderbergh, balanced the salacious sight of Tatum and his co-stars writhing to ’90s R&B with the uglier side of a life spent stripping and a sly, faintly satirical edge. (Soderbergh is back, serving as a producer, cinematographer and editor; Gregory Jacobs takes over the director’s chair.)

The second installment, written by Reid Carolin in a way that manages to be simultaneously arch, painfully self-referential and flatly stupid, chucks any pretense of intelligence and aims squarely at the lowest common denominator.

What’s worse, XXL’s deep cynicism is revealed with each successive stop on the road trip.

First up, a drag bar, where each dancer gets a moment to pander to the LGBT members of the moviegoing audience, before rolling on to a sprawling nightclub in Savannah, Ga., run by the iron-fisted Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith, chomping on scenery with abandon) and with an almost exclusively black clientele — Michael Strahan also turns up here, in a truly bizarre cameo.

Then it’s over to an enormous Low Country estate populated with, shall we say, women of a certain age, all of whom promptly begin frothing at the mouth when Mike and his pals stop by.

By the time the overblown, convention-set finale begins, Magic Mike XXL degenerates into a leering montage of left-field fantasies: a wedding-themed dance coupled with an S&M honeymoon scored by Nine Inch Nails’ Closer; a park bench dance festooned with ice cream toppings; and a raunchy song-and-dance number Glee would be proud of.

From start to finish, Magic Mike XXL feels cheap and pointless, even in spite of its few amusing moments (Manganiello makes an impression with a convenience-store seduction that walks a tightrope between ludicrous and lusty).

The loss of McConaughey, who provided the first Mike film with both sardonic bite and sex appeal, is practically fatal — Manganiello’s and Bomer’s characters are both beefed up in his absence, but neither comes close to filling his G-string.

There’s also no real tension to XXL; Magic Mike mined the taut interplay between Mike and The Kid, as well as Mike’s desire to break out of the seamy world of stripping and do something else with his life.

In XXL, everything is reduced to an eventuality — when Mike first crosses paths with the rebellious photographer Zoe (Amber Heard), all the scene is missing is a giant neon “These two are going to get together!” sign flickering overhead.

But, as pure beefcake cinema goes, Magic Mike XXL delivers the goods. (If the preview audience I saw the film with is any indication, Tatum and company have another monster hit on their hands.)

It’s just a shame the filmmakers didn’t try to appeal to the brain as enthusiastically as they do the groin.

This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Movie review: ‘Magic Mike XXL’."