149: Was ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ Mesmerizing?

Welcome back to a crossover movie I’ll present to my Bulwark Plus. I am your host, Sunny Bunch, Culture Editor of The Bulwark, I’m joined as always by list of Rosenberg of The Watch Compose and Peter Suiterman. A recent magazine, Alyssa Peter. How are you today?

I am maintaining.

I am so happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First, stop being controversy not and not versus. How did you explain cocaine, bear to your kids? Just one of the many questions on top after a Hollywood filled evening in the ads on Super Bowl Sunday. Similarly, my four year old, you know, he he looked me in the eyes. And he said, but papa, as Rommelier has been arrested for myriad crimes, how can they continue with a flash movie when back girl was so cruely canceled by Warner Brothers I didn’t know how to respond to him.

So I just tiered up and looked away and thought about how this would probably be the last time any of us get to see Ben Affleck as Batman, RIP, Snyder versus Speaking of Aflac, he was in a Dunkin Donuts commercial, which was pretty funny. I thought it was a funny commercial. Hollywood as a whole took over the Super Bowl commercial. It has doing so for years now, but this year felt like especially egregious. Just Hollywood Stars Everywhere.

Will Farrell doing ads for electric vehicles and also Netflix. Which I’m sure his handlers at Apple TV plus were his last several projects have been just love. Anna Ferris, doing spots for avocados, Ben Stiller and Steve Martin, or making fun of actors being in ads, daring us to ask if Diet Pepsi, which is a notoriously disgusting drink. Is anyone who has ever been asked is Pepsi okay at a restaurant would know, is good, or if they’re faking it when they drink it and say, oh, so tasty. Adam driver was in the weirdest Adam the night, and I’m not even talking about the spot for his movie sixty five, which involves him traveling back in time to fight dinosaurs.

Didi was there for Uber, Danny McBride, for Downey, John Ham Brie Larson and Pete Davidson for Mayonnaise? Rockstars got into the action to tell us to stop calling accountants Rockstar’s Bradley Cooper did an adorable spot with his mom. He’s so clean-cut and friendly as and what I’m saying is I have a T Mobile plan now. I signed up for it immediately. I was like, this is how you get family love.

Still, I can’t help but feel as though the admin have decided to do what Hollywood more broadly has done, and that’s replaced general creativity with brand awareness. Right? Like, I mean, I guess, like, the ad for the Ram truck that was kind of like in erectile dysfunction ad was kind of funny, I guess. I don’t know. But it was also advertising a truck that literally doesn’t exist yet.

It won’t be on the market for like eighteen months. What’s the spot this year that people were gonna remember for decades to come like the Wasa pads. Right? Or the the frogs? The Budweiser the Budweiser frogs.

You remember the Budweiser frogs. Right? Leading on celebrities to be like, hey, you like famous people. Right? Maybe you like our random product too.

It feels like a cheat. It’s a shortcut. I want I want creativity from our Madison Avenue. People mad Don Draper didn’t die for our sins, so you could just throw some random actor into an ad and say the product. Right?

I don’t think so. No. Okay. But seriously, Alyssa, how did you explain Yeo Grizzly Bear to the kids? What what you you texted us.

You were like, I can’t believe I have to censor the the the show for my children.

Yes. No. I we’ve gone upstairs to watch the Super Bowl and turned it on and, like, the cocaine beer I had was starting up. And so I did a patented, like, mom, lunge for the remote. And fortunately, my daughter misheard me and thought I was talking about Candid Bear

— Candid Bear. — not cocaine.

Yes. So she thinks there’s a movie coming out called Candida Bear and I am spared have a to explain cocaine for another, like, what? Three or four years? We’ll see. What

do we think the log line is for Candid Bear? Bear tells too much to cameraman.

Bear like Bear tells too many truth. Like, is there a get hunted by angry townspeople. No. I mean, like, I feel like cocaine bears one of those things where you explained to the kids, look, that’s a medicine for mummies and dummies. It’s not for children.

You can’t take it. It’s like the liquor cabinet over there. Don’t don’t No. But alright. So seriously, I I the the thing that jumps out this this year is the just overwhelming present presence of Hollywood.

People. And it really does there was a peace and defector just saying, like, you know what? It was cool when we judge people for selling out. And I think that’s I think we need to get back to judging movie stars and TV stars at everybody else for selling out. If you show up in an advertisement, you should you should feel shame and you should be ashamed for doing it.

Can I carve out an exemption for celebrities who are clearly actually obsessed with the product to their auction? And I speak here, of course, with Ben Affleck, and he

wants to

love it Doug these. But but, like, I I’m legally required to defend Ben Affleck’s love of Dunkin Donuts since I am from New England, and so it’s, like, there’ll always be, like, a little bit of dankies flowing through my veins. But also, like, Dunkin’ Donuts is a great product. It’s basically honest working class Starbucks in that, like, it’s there to get you a lot of sugar and get your fat, and we’re not, like, pretending that it’s some artisan, you know, Italian nonsense. And it’s delicious.

And so watching him in a spot that like plays up both the like a celebrity a normal job, and it’s a surprise angle with, like, his legitimate, longest, everish love of the product. With the j low cameo was the only acceptable celebrity appearance in of the night. No.

I think that I mean, look, I think that’s fair. Right? Like, Ben Affleck has kind of un been forcibly memeified for his love of Dunkin Donuts. I think it’s I think it’s fair that he gets to kind of flip that around on his head. So that’s okay.

That’s okay. But I I do feel like everybody else I mean, like, the Adam Driver one in particular, like, that one almost gets passed just because it’s so weird. But, like But,

also, Adam Driver. Right? Like, and of the generation of sort of young actors. Like, he’s sort of the one who I would think would be least likely to sell out in some way. I don’t know why I think that.

Right? Like, he’s gonna be in a like a time travel movie where he fights dinosaurs.

Like,

maybe, you know, maybe he has a cocaine bear of his own to take care of ourselves.

He might also be mister Fantastic. Stick is the rumor in the forthcoming of, you know — Yeah. — of fantastic four film. I

mean, look, I get it. Everybody likes money. But that one that one was surprising to me both because it was like just like, it’s a it’s an awful ad. And it’s like, Adam Driver, what did you do it? What

did you do it? Yeah. That’s Peter, you were the libertarian on the show, which means that you love money above all else. Are are you are you in favor of this triumph of capitalism over art, capitalism and commerce, crushing decency and artists beneath a teal. Yes, obviously.

This is there’s a market for this stuff, and it seems like we should we should have that market. So it

is kind of interesting that this is happening. In some ways, Hollywood stars are the crypto of twenty twenty three, like, relative to twenty what it like, relative When

that when they weren’t actually selling the other way. In twenty twenty

two. But so, baby, what does that tell us about the future of Hollywood? Maybe not so great. But this is this is one of the fruits of globalization. So if you guys go back to the nineteen nineties when, you know, at least Sunny and I, Alyssa, you were maybe starting to watch movies in the nineteen nineties.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And, like, when we were watching movies as high schoolers, as, you know, as teenagers, Right? Like, stars were these rarified things and in in the United States, and we saw them as American movie stars. But a lot of them did advertisements just never in the North American or less often in the European market.

They went to the Asian market to do big advertisements. In fact, this was such a common occurrence that this is maybe not the premise, but a like an underlying premise of the movie lost in translation, which features Bill Murray, a sort of aging past his prime star, who is now getting paid a huge amount of money to do a very small amount of time endorsing Centuri whiskey in in Japan. And the idea back then was that you could do that sort of thing if you were a star as long as you did it out of your main market. Because you didn’t wanna be seen as somebody who is essentially just a cheap pitch man hawking a product in the in the you know, in your market. But then then what happened was YouTube and the Internet made all of the stuff that all of those ads that we couldn’t see that made them all globally available and it there was no way to hide them.

And that’s no point in hiding them. And the money was there. The the brands wanted to pay the celebrities. And the the consumers, I don’t know, maybe they wanted celebrities. Maybe they wanted to at Aflac and Adam Driver hawking, you don’t Dunkin Donuts and whatever else they were advertising as well.

And this seems to me, like, totally fine. It is it is a match up of money that is seeking talents, which is to say, seeking the the built in name, you know, brand recognition of a big star. And those folks are gonna make a ton of money off of doing this. And frankly, that’s gonna subsidize Adam Driver, at least, doing stuff that we wanna see him doing because the like, the well, I can’t speak to individual rates for these actors for these specific ads. In general, it has been the case that when big brands pay these big actors, they’re getting paid a lot more at least on a sort on an on an effective per day basis than they are even to do very big budget movies.

And that’s the allure for them. And so this sort of pads out their finances and makes it possible for them to keep making movies in an era where movie making has become more and more risky. When

thing I would also say is that we’re in this interesting era where a lot of celebrities have incredibly lucrative side businesses. Right? I mean, George Clooney and his tequila brand were sort of the initial version of this, but, you know, Jessica Alba has an incredibly you know, popular and profitable baby products line, the number of other celebrities have gone into the alcohol business is huge. And in fact, I mean, the the halftime performer at the Super Bowls, Rihanna, who has functionally stopped making movie, but has a, at this point, you know, billion dollar cosmetics, and fashion empire that has basically eclipsed the work of making the art that she was doing, that she was performing at the Super Bowl. And so you know, it’s interesting that more of these that those celebrities aren’t necessarily selling their brands specifically at the Super Bowl, but we are in an interesting era of corporateized celebrity, of which this is really only a subset.

And I

would say that some of those products are, in fact, quite good. Just specifically on the the liquor front, Matthew McConaughey’s branded Wild Turkey whiskey long branch is shockingly good and reasonably priced. And it’s just kinda like, it’s kinda wonderful and it sort of tastes like what whiskey branded with Matthew Bacady’s name on the auto should it taste like. It’s kinda smoky. It’s pulled from the Wild Turkey Distillery, which is making some of the best most consistent product in the whiskey world today, also some of the most reasonably priced stuff.

And it’s great. And like that is Not all of that stuff is great. I think, you know, some of the some of the celebrity branded boos is is it’s usually at least pretty good, but it’s often overpriced for what it is. But this that sort of thing can be a service to consumers.

Well, there’s also, you know, it’s worth it’s worth noting that there has been a real see change in audience attitudes towards stuff like this. You know, once upon a time, it used to be considered a real faux pas. To to be in these things to, you know, make it make it look like you were more interested in money than authenticity, whatever that meant. Right? Artist you know, musicians in particular would get would get all manner of shit from their Gen X and and earlier fans.

You know, for for selling out for for giving their commercial giving giving their songs over to commercials. And that has that has — Sure. — handy rock band about feelings, and now you’re selling Cadillac. And that has changed. That has changed dramatically for a couple of reasons.

One, I think, is just the the absolute triumph of populism, right, optimism, the idea that the the idea that a a thing being popular is equivalent to being good and high quality, and advertising is just another reflection of the the the optimistic ethos. I I and there’s a book called Status and Culture by w David Marks. By w David Marks. That kind of gets into all this and the the shifting attitudes and how all that has changed. I recommend people checking it out.

Again, in particular, the music industry have changed so much. That you you just cannot make a living selling records anymore. That is nobody makes a living by selling records. I mean, it’s getting harder and harder to make a living by touring. Touring itself unless you are one of these big legacy press d jacks.

Right? It’s hard to make money touring. The way you make money is by selling your like Apple picks up your your song or BMW picks up your song or Honda picks up your, you know, whatever whatever company picks up your song and uses it in their ad campaigns, which then in turn increases streams and, like, gets people interested in your show because it’s showing up everywhere. I’ll put it this way. I have less of a problem with musicians doing this than I do with actors doing it.

And I don’t know why. I don’t know what that what part of me it is that is like more annoyed by this when actors do it.

Well, I mean, is it that, you know, the musicians don’t know. Maybe it’s just part of this sort of IPization of our pop culture. Right? I mean, it’s like, you don’t have anything else to say about the product. So you’re just throwing, you know, app IP

is lazy. It’s just it’s lazy. All of these ads yesterday with the the celebrities were almost uniformly terrible and lazy. So I

think that the real problem here is that you’ve chosen to watch the Super Bowl? I

mean, your problem is that you’re not patriotic, American, Peter. But, you know, just gonna have to deal with

that. The most popular show in America every year. Like, there’s nothing there’s nothing else that comes even close. Oh, wait. Wait.

Wait. Now who’s Now who’s the populist?

Right? Didn’t

you just deliver a great lecture

on how thick just because things are popular? I mean, it doesn’t mean they’re good. Well,

I I agree that it doesn’t mean is that it’s good, but it could be better. Could It certainly used to be better. I feel like also I feel like part of the problem also is that people started watching the Super Bowl for the ads instead of the ads being like a pleasant bonus. Now it’s like, oh, we gotta we gotta have the most the most viral

I. But they did that because of the clever ads the late nineties, in particular, the Budweiser unit frogs, which delivered us, by the way, the whole Johnny Depp superstar era of pirates of the Caribbean, because those were all directed by Gore verbinski. And, like, that was his that was his early pre, you know, pre before he did mousetrap, before he did the pirates of the Caribbean films, he was doing Budweiser ads. And this is this, to me, seems like there’s always been this kind of back and forth in this trade between advertising based film making and arch based or sort of you know, just sort of entertainment based film making. And part of the reason we loved those nineties ads is because they were they there were little short films that were designed to be memorable and and through being memorable would sell it would sell product.

I just I don’t feel like there’s any conflict here. You know, great directors have, like, moved back and forth between those realms Tony Scott in particular got his start doing advertisements and then brought that to, you know, to to top gun and to to, like, many decades of great films that were obviously influenced by advertising. And to me, these things like, they’re the same thing. They are, like, it’s just in one case, they’re trying to get you to buy a BMW. And in the other case, they’re trying to get you to buy a movie ticket and some popcorn.

I

mean, maybe the problems that the ads are just bad. It was like, it was a bad, unengaging year for ads. And, you know, after we’ve had this sort of cultural acknowledgment that as cynical as it is, advertising can be an art. It’s sort of a bummer to watch people who are in some in many of these cases, rightly famous because they’re talented. Starring in what amount to a bunch of really awful thirty second productions.

I would just say that the cure for this is David Fincher’s Nike ad from a number of years ago. Titled Fate. I think it’s from twenty sixteen. It might be it’s but it’s right around there. And it is just an amazing little tiny short film that is designed to sell you shoes, but it’s just a fantastic little tiny piece of filmmaking about sports, which I don’t care about at all.

But I love David Fincher, and it’s a great example of how this sort of thing, how Hollywood talent can be put in service of of advertising, of and and go really, really well. So

do we think? Is it a controversy or a controversy that the the ads at the Super Bowl were too reliant on celebrities Peter?

It’s a controversy, and I’m available for selling out. Should any brands out there want the Superman stamp of of approval? Alyssa.

It’s not controversial. Duckies forever.

It’s a controversy. Get get go back to the studio. Artists and make art, not commerce. You leave the leave the ads to the people who can’t get work in movies. You’re taking you’re taking jobs from hardworking, non SAG yet members of the acting public.

Get knock it off. Alright. Make sure to swing by board plus for our bonus episode this week. We’re we’re which we’re gonna talk all about chanting Tatum. Is he the last Hollywood star?

Many questions about chanting Tatum speaking of the charming potato onto the main event, Magic Mike’s last dance. The third and perhaps final entry in the Magic Mike’s series. Before we discuss this film, I think it’s worth setting stage and explaining how we got here. Right? Back in twenty twelve, magic mic was a surprise commercial and critical hit.

Grossed a hundred sixty seven million dollars worldwide on a budget of seven million dollars. And people were surprised by both the critical and the commercial success because weren’t really expecting much out of the series despite it being directed by Stephen Soderberg, good director, everyone likes him. And starring Channing Tatum, who had wowed audiences a few months earlier with the twenty one jump street reboot, revival, whatever you wanna call that. And in recent years and the years before that had really struck gold with the step up series. I think people were expecting magic mic to be something like a grown up version of the step up movies.

Right? Channing Tatum would dance, women would swoon, We’d all move on with their lives. And instead, what we got was a shockingly good movie. I mean, genuinely shocking. Not only did it have greater depth than anyone expected, because it was really The movie is not really about male strippers.

It’s about the post great recession economic landscape. It also starred Matthew McConaughey in the role that basically kicked off the McConnoons. Right? It’s scummy strip club owner, and we shouldn’t undersell this. But it that movie actually had as much eye candy for the guys as the gals.

Maybe we can talk about that too. But There’s been an effort in recent years to recast magic mic x x l, which is the first of the sequels as superior to the original. And this is an insane thing that has been happening. I wanna I’m putting I’m putting my foot down now. That’s insane.

Because that movie is what everyone thought magic Mike was gonna be, which is just a kind of a lame dance movie designed to appeal to older women, like find whatever, but it wasn’t good, not a good movie, which brings me to magic Mike’s last dance. Steven Soderberg is back in the director’s chair for this one, and Mike who’s played again by chanting tatum is once again in rocky financial straits. The pandemic wiped out his custom furniture company, so he’s tending bar. And while doing this, he meets Max, a wealthy woman played by Sal Maheic, who was separated from her wealthy husband. She asked him for a dance.

She’s willing to pay for the privilege and something more. And she gets every penny’s worth. Mike turns down Max’s money afterwards. She’s like, I don’t need your money. I don’t want it.

I would’ve done I did this for free. And Max decides that the world needs to see Mike’s gift So she puts him in charge of the theater she has acquired and I guess the separation, it’s not really clear to me how that works, but whatever. Mike is taking over a stodgy old play and he’s revamping it with male strippers. But Mike seems he seems lost. He seems lost.

He’s not quite sure what he’s doing. And really, kind of a problem in this whole movie to me. Magic Mike was a movie about a guy who was a hustler and a driver realizing that the world in which he was getting involved was not only city and shady but kind of soul killing. Right? That whole movie is about coming to grips with the fact that stripping is kind of gross and extracating himself from that life is his arc.

That’s the arc of that movie. And frankly, that’s why magic magic magicJack’s Excel doesn’t work. And I I think it’s why magic Magic Mike’s last dance doesn’t really work either. The movie isn’t about Mike, but Mike’s producer, Max. She’s trying to find a product that will appeal to people.

She’s trying to figure out her own life. But it’s not personalized enough to work. I don’t know. It’s just never clear to me at all why Max is there and he himself seems almost uninterested at very least kind of confused by what’s going on. He’s just going along with what she wants.

It doesn’t help that the big production that they’re building to is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, like the just the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, there’s one great dance set piece at the end involving a ballerina and a huge manufactured rainstorm. Which find that’s lovely, but the rest of it seems is just like genuinely mentally deranged. I’m also just like kind of flummox by some of the details that feel wrong. In this movie? Like Mike’s business going under during the pandemic?

Yes. This is my huge problem with this movie. Right? Like an I’m sorry. Like, an But I mean,

incredibly

but, like but, you know, I’m I’m sorry. I’m just an incredibly good looking former male stripper who makes custom furniture often at a race like sort of recycled or recovered stuff during one of the greatest explosion in durable goods spending in history. Like, he would be doing so well. Right.

This was like I mean, this was like the one big industry during the shutdown was home home renovations, home decor people were just like board and nesting. There’s a zero percent chance. His his

gone on TikTok and by the end of the pandemic would have been like, bought out by, like, a room and board or West Elm or somebody and, like, he wouldn’t have so much money. And the trophy is

I’m glad we’re on the same page on this because I have here in my script, I feel like it’s a small thing to complain about, but it just like drives home how different this feels from the original. The original was about a guy trying to make it in the world. And this is about I I don’t know. What what all women want everywhere? I you by rejecting specificity and embracing generalization, the whole thing is kind of doomed.

But I don’t know. Peter, you you like this movie more than either I or elicited, I think. What was it about it that appealed to

you? This isn’t a very good movie. It’s totally absurd and every major plot point just doesn’t add up doesn’t hold up to even the slightest amount of scrutiny. But it is a kind of entertaining and enjoyable movie because Moment to moment, scene to scene, Satterberg holds all of it together with sharp observations about how people actually are. And there’s so much in this movie that is done just a little bit off kilter.

That is given just a little bit of gritty granularity that wouldn’t appear in a version of this movie directed by anybody else even with essentially the same And so I I just wanna point out a couple of small moments that I r r I think representative of watch makes this movie. Again, not Good, exactly. Just easy to watch and enjoyable. After that big dance sequence that you mentioned with the ballerina and the the rain inside, and however they did that, which, like, I don’t know if they can really do that. It seemed like those are Hollywood rain towers, and then, like, suddenly there was dancing happening five minutes later without any water on the stage, whatever.

It doesn’t matter. After that happens, Shane and Kate him in the ballerina, whose name I don’t think we even know. They go backstage and they’re just sort of chatting about how it was a good dance and they pulled it off. And it’s not like a big scene where like anything is revealed. There’s no specific dialogue there.

It almost feels improvised. But Satterberg is showing us this little tiny bit of backstage performer exulsion. Right? Like this this, like, this glee they had putting on something wonderful. And it’s it’s a little human moment that wouldn’t be there in most versions of this.

In most versions of this, you would have had high fiving and like a little speech about that was awesome and meaningful. Instead, we get, like, these people are exhausted. They’re sweaty. And, like, they’re just sort of chatting at each other, and it doesn’t matter what they’re saying. They’re just real people existing in something like a real world even though, like I said, every single big beat doesn’t work.

Another there’s another moment in here where they’re rehearsing. And all of the the the super hot guys are on stage and, like, mostly shirtless and I don’t even remember what bit it is. But this is before the the big before the big dance. And in most movies, this would be shot straight on, probably from below, to emphasize, oh look at these larger than life guys or they’re big abs. There are twelve packs in there.

How many, like, little muscles like, you you would it would be all about the hunkness of it. And instead, Soderbergh has angled and turned the camera. And he’s he’s not he’s showing us the what’s happening on stage, but he’s also showing us off stage. And showing us chaining tatum there, sort of with his arms crossed being confused, not looking not not exactly liking what he’s seeing. Have a great he’s certain, like, in that moment, you can see Chaining Tatum’s character thinking about the the show and thinking about this thing that he actually does care about.

Which is, you know, which is dancing and sort of making a good show and pleasing people. And the movie is just filled with little tiny bits like that. When they build out the the stripper stage, in front of the in front of the old stage so they expand it. This in turn leads to a very funny plot point about whether or not the historic like, this passes historic review board stuff, which I, of course, appreciated since, in fact, that stuff is highly politicized and mostly total nonsense. Especially in big cities in Europe and the United States.

But what what you see is, like, you they actually show you the the little screen that the contractors are using to, like, design all of this and sort of, like, pull it up. Right? He’s like, Soderberg is just continually inserting ordinary, boring, bland little bits of real life into this otherwise completely absurd, completely hyperbolic, exaggerated for effect, unbelievable, mostly pandering towards, you know, the the older women audience that the Magic: My franchise is now targeted at type of movie. And the movie just has so many of those details, so well observed all throughout that I couldn’t help but kind of sit back and enjoy the the silliness of

it.

Even though, like I said, I I agree with you. There’s no plot point in this movie that is important. That makes any kind of sense. The characters don’t make any kind of sense. Like, the the big the fundamental thing, like, the the the premise of it, just as beyond the the furniture store, like beyond the fact that that would have succeeded.

The premise that, like, Max would just be like, hey, this guy gave me an incredible lap dance. I want to put you in charge of directing hiring and directing a dozen guys at a stage show at a to get back a minute. Like, it doesn’t in any way make any sense at all. And yet, Satterberg is just, you know, invested in making these kind of interesting specific little people within the absurdity of the premise, and I appreciated that.

Alyssa, you are the target audience for this movie. What did you make of magic Mike’s last answer. Are

you saying that I am, like, an older woman, something? No.

I’m just saying that you are you’re a woman. So that’s, like, That’s it. That’s half the audience here. They’re going this is going for women. I

was really frustrated by this in part because I love the first magic mic so much. I just think it’s incredible. And to see the franchise complete its arc from saying that like, you know, selling your body has a sort of corrosive impact on your soul to a final beat in this trilogy where the movie itself is selling, like, an actual live magic mic stage experience that, like, Soderberg and Tatum put together, and then it’s sold, like, a hundred and twenty five million dollars worth of tickets. Right? Like, the franchise has completed the full arc from critique to product.

And as a sale, it’s not a very effective one. Right? It’s, you know, I mean, as funny as the beat is with the, like, lonely historical preservation lady who gets like sort of seduced and reawakened by this like somewhat funny, surrealistic dance on, like, a London double decker bus. Like because

you could absolutely take over a bus like that. That’s a real thing that normal people can do with the real

world?

Yeah. Absolutely. Like, it’s a movie about what women want that doesn’t have that much interest in, like, women broadly. Right? There’s a different version of this that hinted at the idea that Max Sandra is like kind of a diletton.

Right? She is someone who adopts charities or interests just to fill up her time and that she may not have any particular, like, actual talents or passions. And The movie doesn’t actually do a very good job of selling the idea that this is a, you know, sort of a creative awakening. For both of them. Right?

And there’s a version of this movie where Max just is a dilator. Right? Where she sort of talks Mike into believing that this thing that he knew was spiritually not that great for him is in fact like his great calling and like this is his artistry even where she convinced us to give up the furniture stuff and do this instead. And then it turns out it really just is vacating and back at her ex husband’s and and she’s kinda he’s kinda stranded there with a long term plan. And instead the movie wants to sell the two of them as like a grand art statistic collaboration and passion.

And other than the fact that, like, in a summer haike pinot pinot and cadome have good chemistry with each other. I mean, Channing cadome has good chemistry with basically everyone. It doesn’t really sell their art a collaboration or the idea that that, like, as human beings, they would be good for each other. Right? It tries to elevate you

know,

the stripping in part because they would like to sell more tickets to the stage show and ends up cheapening the emotion at the heart of it. And I just found it really hard to take. I’ve been more irritated by this movie the longer I’ve thought about Like, I sort of sympathized with that guy on Twitter who’s, like, waiting in the who’s, like, I’m in this garage, waiting to fight everyone involved with magic mic glass dance. I was like, I I I was like, I I second that, dude. Like, he has my fist.

I no. It’s it’s interesting. I so here. Can I can I run a half thought out theory by you guys? I haven’t actually I haven’t written this anywhere because I don’t I I I’m not sure how to articulate it fully.

Because I do think look, I have a lot of respect for Steven Soderberg, who I think is a great director, and I think he is up to something here even though I don’t think it entirely works. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the main character, the producer character’s name is Max, for instance. This was originally a production that was supposed to be on HBO Max. He was given forty million dollars or something like that to make another magic mic movie. I was like, sure, I’ll do that.

Steven Soderburger is famously kind of platform agnostic. He’s been working with Netflix. He has not. I think he I think he likes the theatrical experience, but there’s not, you know, a crusader about it like some of us on this podcast made.

He made one of the very very first straight a day in date VOD films bubble, which almost no one saw is totally weird, maybe his worst movie. But yeah, he’s

been he’s been an experimenter with formats for a while. So I think I think that he is he is making a broader point here about the the yeah, especially with the voice so so this this the structure of this film, there’s a voice over throughout about the nature of dance and what dance means about the the the centuries and how humans have essentially evolved with dance. The dance is a thing that you know, is is almost coded genetically into us or some people, some of us. I I don’t have that dance gene. I can assure you.

I have neither the dance gene nor the friendliness gene. Apparently go hand in hand. But okay. So so Max is wants to revamp the theater Right? She wants to she wants to bring this humanizing experience to more people.

So that’s why they’re putting on this big show. I just don’t I I like I I kind of I think I kind of understand what he’s giving at here, but I don’t think it works. Or am I am I right? Am I just, like, reading too much into the name of the character? My have I have I gone off the rails here?

I

mean, McSandra is a ridiculous name. But I mean I

mean, I kind of buy it. But no. But so so but here’s and here’s the other part of this, is that Channing Tatum’s Care magic Mike looks lost in this whole movie. He is doing this specifically because she asked him to, he has no interest really in it until the end where he’s like, alright, I can do this thing and it’s gonna be pretty great. And it all kinda clicks for him, which again, like, if that feels like how this entire project came together.

Max well, HBO Max came to Steven Soderberg was like, hey, do a magic mic thing for us. And he was like, yeah, I get I’m I mean, I’ll do it. You didn’t give him give me the money. I’ll do it. And it kinda gets it’s up there.

It’s like, but it’s there. That’s that’s how I feel this whole thing is. I feel like it’s just a microcosm for like the streaming moment that we live in right now. The irony, of course, of all this, is that it wound up in theaters. It wound it would it went instead of going straight to HBO Max, the people Warner Brothers were like, well, let’s put it in theaters and make twenty or thirty million bucks that way.

And then we’ll put it on HBO Max people watch it that way. Maybe.

This does not seem at all implausible to me. I wouldn’t, in any way, put it past Stephen Satterberg. To embed a critic of the the the financial and distribution system that got the movie that he is making made inside the movie. Like, that’s that’s very Stephen Satterberg. But

then I kinda wish it was a better critique.

Well, I mean, that’s that’s the thing is that it really does feel like a first draft. This feels like a first draft. This feels like me sitting down and just like saying these words on the podcast without having written them out or thinking them through, just rambling. And then somebody’s like, yeah, let’s turn that into a podcast episode.

Again, then the version of this where Maxendrick is a total dilettante, and the movie has like a much sour ending would be much more convincing. Right? It’s like Well,

this is why I mean, this is why the first magic mic is actually very good is because it is it is fairly sour look at the whole industry. I mean, it is like it is a it is not a, like, everybody’s gonna dance and be happy. Movie. That’s because that like, I’m sorry. That world is weird and shady and seeding.

And it’s it’s it’s fine to treat it that way.

I

don’t know. It’s a great movie about Tampa and the weird economy of of Tampa. In the early tens?

Well, yeah. And just all the details in that movie about, like, the roofing contractor that Mike works for, like, hiring guys off Craigslist because he doesn’t wanna deal with union labor and limiting them to, like, a Pepsi a day in their contract. X and just yeah. I mean, the scene that Tatum has with Betsy Brown, like a woman officer at the bank, where he’s trying to, like, effectively charm her into overlooking his credit score and everything else and give him a loan. And you know, it’s like, sort of that when he realizes that won’t work, that’s for a flash of anger in there.

It just Yes. That’s a real good movie and this is not. I mean, I think Magic: Mike, XXL is fun. Right? Like, the, you know, those sort of impromptu scene to I want it that way at the gas station convenience stores like legitimately really funny and fun I mean, another problem with this movie is that none of the dancers are characters.

Right? Like and it’s not like the character in the previous two movies were like deeply developed, but they were human beings. And again, there’s like another potential sour note here why doesn’t Mike bring his friends to London with him? Right? Like, why doesn’t he start by being like, well, these guys are really great and can help me run this show?

Like, he effectively screws them over. Right? Like, this is sort of like the big payday and chance that, like, even just to like go to London. And the movie never even gestured with a video that he would bring him along. Well,

maybe he finally realized that Kevin Nash is a terrible dancer. It’s like the the low key funniest thing in the first one, which I rewatched last week as as prep for this was, like, the scenes with Kevin the scenes where they’re doing, like, the big group dance is Kevin Nash who once upon time was a professional wrestler. And as he plays Tarzan in these movies. If you watch the group dances, he is he is just doing the most half assed, you know, doing like basically mimicking the motions, dances that I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s it’s very funny.

And it’s not it’s not called attention to, which which makes it even funnier. It’s he’s just there doing it. Alright. Enough about this. So what do we think?

Thumbs up or thumbs down. Magic mics last dance. Peter, it’s

kinda tough. I like I said, I find it enjoyable. It’s not a good movie though. I’m gonna give it this, like, the most thumbs down thumbs up. It’s a thumbs up, but it’s, like, the smallest thumbs up I can possibly give it.

Alyssa.

Thumbs down.

Thumbs down, sadly, though, if this if this H. B. O. Max theory comes together in my mind, I might have to flip that thumbs up. I don’t know.

We’ll see. We’ll see how that goes. Alright. That is it for this week’s show. Make sure head over to Bulwark Plus for a bonus episode on Friday, can tell our friends, the strong recommendation from our friend is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences if you don’t grow will die.

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