If the Oscars are like the electoral college, selecting the cream of the crop through an arcane and confusing process available only to an older, white, male elite population, then that makes the People’s Choice Awards the popular vote. It m...
Magic Mike was a movie about strippers trying to make ends meet in the midst of the Great Recession, the difficulty of modern romance, and the dangers of drug use. Magic Mike XXL is a movie about strippers stripping. And not a whole lot else.
There are a lot of highly complicated moves in Magic Mike. But, despite the degree of difficulty, Channing Tatum never once used a stunt double. All those backflips, grinds and spins were all his moves. Not bad, but when you consider Tatum himself used to be a male stripper, it all makes sense. This is just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which backs up on ya with Magic Mike.
A few days ago, Channing Tatum got honest about a few things, including the status of that second Ghostbusters reboot. The Magic Mike star made it sound like the project was stuck in development, toiling away under the watchful eyes of countless Sony execs. Today, it looks like Tatum was underselling the situation. In a separate interview with his producing partner (and Magic Mike XXL co-director), Reid Carolin, it was revealed that Tatum won’t be busting any ghosts after all.
Here’s something strange in the neighborhood: Deadline reports that Sony isn’t waiting for Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot (with its cast of comedy all-stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon) to debut before planning additional Ghostbuster sequels or spinoffs. They’re already getting to work on what the trade describes as a “guy-themed” offshoot with an all-male cast.
It’s great when a movie understands exactly what it is. ‘Magic Mike’ was an intelligently made Steven Soderbergh movie about life in Great Recession America. But it became a huge surprise hit in the summer of 2012—grossing $167 million worldwide against a budget of just $7 million—because it had Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, and an assortment of the finest man-candy in Hollywood bumping and grinding with their shirts off. The marketing for ‘Magic Mike XXL’ seems to have an innate sense of this. The first poster is a picture of Tatum with his shirt off, pointing at his crotch where the word “Coming” is suggestively placed. And this teaser trailer is basically Channing Tatum (and the rest of his team of shredded male strippers) dancing, stripping, and then dancing with their shirts off. I smell box-office gold. Wait, no, that’s baby oil and Muscle Milk. But those things smell a lot like box-office gold when they’re in ‘Magic Mike XXL.’
Episode 415 of ‘Seinfeld’ was called “The Movie,” and it ended with Jerry delivering a monologue about the guy in every group of friends who can’t follow the plots of films and invariably spends them whispering confused questions to their seatmates (“Why did they kill that guy? I thought he was with them? Wasn't he with them? Why would they kill him if he was with them? Oh, he wasn't with them. It's a good thing they killed him!”) ‘Jupiter Ascending’ turned me into that guy. If you can explain the plot of this baffling movie in all of its intricacies, you are either a genius or one of the Wachowskis who wrote and directed it. It’s hard to believe that a movie that contains this much exposition could also be this confusing, but it does and it is. Something went horribly wrong here.
Channing Tatum was very lonely as a child. So lonely, in fact, that the guy -- now America's sweetheart, one of the world's most popular actors, and an international sex symbol -- had to go searching for friends in offbeat places. That's how he found Boyd, his imaginary friend, and don't you dare say he invented him, okay, Boyd was real.
Matthew McConaughey may not be back for more super-sized 'Magic Mike 2' action, as the head honcho from the original feature won't be returning for whatever delights its sequel holds for us, but the film is lining up a very, ahem, eclectic cast so far.
'22 Jump Street' gave us one of the most hilarious end credits sequences in comedy history, and one that seemed to signal to audiences that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were done with making 'Jump Street' movies, as it delivered concepts for about 20 fake sequels. But not so fast: '22 Jump Street' writer Rodney Rothman has been hired to return for '23 Jump Street,' so it seems like Ice Cube's threat to send our favorite undercover cops to medical school might not be out of the question.