Let Them Eat Beefcake

Year: 2015

Director: Gregory Jacobs

Cast: Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Typically it’s a fantastic thing if a sequel manages to recapture the spirit of the original film. So by those standards, Magic Mike XXL is a perfect movie. Unfortunately, the spirit of Magic Mike (a stripper film largely unconcerned with titillation that endeavors to tell a microcosmic story of the American economy) is pretty much the exact opposite of what the average audience member would want to see. It can be forgiven in the original, thanks to Steven Soderbergh’s sure hand, but director Gregory Jacobs (his longtime producer) is no Soderbergh*.The result is a film full of chiseled hunks in which the only thing that gets stripped off is the meaningful subtext. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

*Steven Soderbergh did shoot and edit this film, but it’s probably in his best interest to downplay his involvement. 

Boy, will we.

First, the plot. In Magic Mike XXL, Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer’s characters asked for too much money have started a show overseas, abandoning the gaggle of strapping strippers known as Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello) and that title refers to his personality, not his apparatus; Tarzan (Kevin Nash), an aging, goateed hunk whose lines have doubled now that a quarter of the cast is MIA; Ken (Matt Bomer), the only LGBT character so of course he’s now some kind of sexless vegan chakra worshipper; and Tito (Adam Rodriguez), who clearly doctored his IMDb page to say he as in the first movie because I have not a scrap of memory of him. As one last hurrah, they decide to put on a show at the 2015 Stripper Convention (which everyone they meet has totally heard of, yet still has an attendance of like 80 people) and invite Magic Mike (Channing Tatum) to come along with them on their road trip to scenic Myrtle Beach.

Mike has just broken up with his girlfriend Cody Horn because, actually, what is she even up to? Why couldn’t she do this movie? He decides to come on the trip to, I don’t know, learn about himself or some crap. After their MC, Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias, for some reason) crashes their car, they must scramble to find a new MC and transportation, though they mostly just sidle through some Road Trip vignettes starring the silky smooth stripper palace madame Rome (Jada Pinkett-Smith), the hospitable Southern divorcée Nancy (Andie MacDowell), and the most toxically obnoxious hipster trash abortive love interest this side of Dirty Grandpa, Zoe (Amber Heard).

My thoughts and prayers go out to her bracelet foley artist, because every time she moves those bohemian toothpicks she calls arms, it sounds like a f**king wind chime.

Magic Mike XXL has been described as a “hang-out movie,” which is actually pretty accurate. It exactly captures the feeling of hanging out with your older brother and his skater friends, who only tolerate each other because they all do the same thing and are too stoned to actually have anything interesting to say. Manganiello’s character is the biggest offender, because the movie seems convinced that he’s an asshole with a heart of gold when he’s really just a deranged, foul-mouthed property destroyer who should be medicated, if not actively incarcerated. Although, to be fair, he’s the only character in the film with a recognizable personality of any kind, so maybe I should lay off him.

However, Not all of the film is quite so aggravating as those early scenes where tensions rankle beneath the surface of the group for reasons nobody can quite identify. In fact, Magic Mike XXL is a fascinating study in just how empty a feature film can be despite a sprawling run time that tops two hours. All those things that typically define a work of cinema are but dust in the wind. Let’s run MMXXL through the basics, shall we, and see what we come up with.

PLOT: Although some might argue that Magic Mike XXL is the Ballad of a Soldier of Channing Tatum stripper movies, in which a charismatic young swain wanders the countryside improving the lives of people he meets along the way, those people would be fictional. Also wrong. Beyond the first act, there is not a whiff of drama or tension of any kind, and the two potentially romantic subplots are so low key that I’m fairly certain they don’t actually exist. They certainly aren’t resolved by the film’s abrupt ending, which is about as jarring as being hit by a freight train. On the moon.

DIALOGUE: You know that thing Judd Apatow does where he sets the camera down and just lets his actors riff for a bit? That seems to be how this script was written. Very scene is an endless kaleidoscope of mumbled nonsense and halfhearted improve, spiced up by such sterling clunkers as “It’s not bro time, it’s showtime.”

ACTING: It’s not like the script provides much to work with, but every performer seems to be on the verge of passing out. I genuinely admire Channing Tatum (especially in comedies), but he indiscriminately disappoints here, slurring every scene like he just ate a peanut butter sandwich and is trying to lick it off the roof of his mouth. Also, an allegedly comedic drug freak out scene is so underplayed that I was beginning to think I made up the whole thing.

STRIPPING: You know what I love about male strippers? How they never take their pants off. Now, look, I’ve made my peace with the fact that these actors are too successful in their careers to actually whip it out on camera, but in half the performances they don’t even take off their jeans! They must have taken their stripping cues from the movie Burlesque (which couldn’t even be bothered to look up “burlesque” in the dictionary), because nowhere in my universe does strip show  involve a man just taking off his shirt, maybe singing poorly, and then going home.

Oh, also the acts last about ten seconds each, are poorly lit, poorly staged, and very infrequently crop up in the first place. Also, certain performers who shall remain nameless are a tad rusty on their dance moves, and the movie’s keen avoidance of showing them perform only serves to highlight how little he’s actually doing. The producers should refund all the bachelorette parties that made the mistake of going to see this movie in the theaters.

CHARACTERS:

Eh, who needs ‘em?

What I have described thus far is a supremely drab movie. And that’s a very apt description, but there is a certain key factor I’ve neglected to share: When Magic Mike XXL gets going, it is a hilarious titan of crummy filmmaking. Somewhere around the halfway point, when the gang visits Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Pleasure Palace, the film adopts a supposedly reverential tone of female affirmation that goes so wildly awry that it’s magnificently captivating.

Let’s pause a moment and bask in the glory that is Jada’s Xanadu. Shirtless men give lap dances to teeming hordes of women in multiple lushly appointed rooms while they toss an infinite supply of dollar bills in the air like it’s a ticker tape parade. Rome the MC bounces through the rooms at her whim like a pinball, constantly interrupting performances to make loquacious pronouncements to her beaming bevy of “queens” and selecting one lucky, self-conscious lady to be reminded she is beautiful. This is always the skinniest girl in the room. 

They are then treated with some arrestingly bad shirtless improve rap from Childish Gambino himself (Donald Glover, who in all fairness is rather talented in real life and proves as much in a later musical number. …This movie has so many musical numbers, you guys.) after being asked the exquisitely inane question, “What is your favorite thing?” People apparently shell out the big bucks for this.

This overboiled, garish phantasmagoria so thoroughly misunderstands eroticism that it might just be a masterpiece of dream logic cinema. The otherworldly delights give way to Andie MacDowell’s delightful turn as a salty Southern belle with a preposterous drawl, in which she and her Sex and the City gang tell tales of ex-husbands and flirt with our dear strippers. This scene is unfortunately stolen by a reaction shot of a dialogue-free woman haphazardly mouthing along to a Bryan Adams musical number that goes on about two minutes too long, but MacDowell’s absurd, molasses-accented charisma makes this the best scene in the entire affair.

She’s like Scarlett O’Hara meets Gomer Pyle, and we’re all the better for it.

Now a film this dull can’t be totally saved by a healthy dose of diva mayhem, but it can certainly be elevated. Never forget Magic Mike XXL’s pornish editing in which conversations abruptly fade to the same conversation at a random, equally inconsequential point. Or its oddly profuse use of profanity, which is ever used to bust taboos, but rather as an oddly dark, angry lexicon that in no way fits the movie’s tone. And there’s always that infuriatingly shallow ending that resolves absolutely nothing. However, it’s still possible to have a good time watching this though, as with its predecessor, it’s never the way you’d expect from a movie about male strippers.

TL;DR: Magic Mike XXL is a boring, tremendously inane film that has next to nothing to with with anything, let alone stripping.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1578

Popcorn Kernels: Runners-Up

In my quest for Oscar nominees, I’ve come across a couple flicks that didn’t quite manage to snag the coveted Best Picture slot. Here are my mini-reviews. These are their stories.

The Danish Girl

Year: 2015

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In 1920’s Denmark, celebrated painter Einar Wegener begins to transition into a woman (Lili Elbe), becoming a transgender pioneer while attempting to maintain a relationship with his wife Gerda. Incidentally, it’s almost impossible to pick the right pronoun when somebody is transitioning mid-sentence. Somebody should get on that.

Tom Hooper is the arthouse counterpart to Tobe Hooper. Both men with dubiously inconsistent directing prowess, they’ve managed to stumble their way into wide acclaim and the occasional masterpiece. While Tobe might be more of a household name thanks to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, Tom has earned himself a ludicrously high number of Oscar nominations. It’s up to you to decide which fate is better. So here we have The Danish Girl, his follow-up to The King’s Speech and Les Misérables, and the Oscarbaitiest film of his career to date, which is saying something.

Let me tell you right off the bat, the man’s direction is quite distinctly one of the worst things about the film, which is actually pretty decent, all things considered. Stagey and far too focused on geometry rather than human emotion, Hooper’s work stifles the film while keeping the audience at arm’s length. He frames people behind objects to an almost obnoxious degree, as though deliberately baiting viewers to call him out. It’s a load of distracting nonsense that obscures what could be a fun, lush melodrama. 

The material is already so far from reality (based on a book that’s a fictional account of the lives of Lili and Gerda, it is two planes removed from the truth, which is more interesting but light-years less angsty) that a truly wonderful over-the-top weepy could have been born from The Danish Girl. However, as it stands, the film is just a dry vehicle for two incredibly strong performances. If you think of stars Eddie Redmayne an Alicia Vikander (fresh from her starmaking turn in Ex Machina) as a work of art, the film itself is just a particularly ostentatious frame in which they are being displayed.

As far as the co-stars have terrific, bristling chemistry together, their individual performances are even better. Eddie Redmayne really is a triumph here, playing a real person rather than a dramatic type. There is one moment early on in the movie where his breath catches nervously upon being discovered. It’s a microscopic moment, but it took my breath away. Even more notable for her subtlety, Vikander holds her own, frequently hoisting the movie on her back and carrying it single-handedly across the finish line. For all that Redmayne is spectacular, Vikander is steadfast and never flickers. This is partially the script and partially her performance, but The Danish Girl is primarily her story and for good reason.

There are many better films that The Danish Girl could have been, but at least the one that it is has some incredible elements. And Amber Heard doesn’t have enough scenes to be a distraction, even though her skill has much improved in the decade since All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Thank goodness for small favors. So really, the movie succeeds in spite of Hooper and there’s absolutely no question why The Danish Girl is leading the Oscar acting categories yet notably absent from Best Picture.

Rating: 6/10

Joy

Year: 2015

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper 

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman puts her life’s savings on the line to pursue her dream: inventing things that improve the lives of others and selling them on QVC.

I’ve been compromised. After avoiding the twee-looking ensemble exploits of David O. Russell’s two previous Oscar-nominated films, I finally caved and watched Joy. Although it’s more of a Jennifer Lawrence showcase than anything, it’s nevertheless the third of a decreasingly prestigious bunch. We don’t have much time, so let’s get into it.

For the first half of its run time, Joy is – let’s be frank – uncompromisingly messy. A nervous attempt at evoking the fairy tale charm of Amélie, it’s too clammy and self-serious to pull off that live action cartoon feeling. This section is filled to the brim with broad characterizations, meta narration, and metaphors so clunky that you couldn’t even sell them for scrap. One in particular, a deranged and obvious cicada metaphor that treats the insects like metamorphosing butterflies, is actually rejected by the film itself in a line explicitly decrying its presence.

Even the technical aspects come crumbling down around Joy’s first act. The pacing goes haywire, leaping through scenes at a breakneck speed, the young actress playing Joy’s daughter (oh yeah, Jennifer Lawrence’s character is both named Joy and a mother of two – roll with me, here) seems to be actively attempting to tank her scenes with a dizzy, blank-faced performance, and there’s a flubbed line reading that somehow managed to avoid getting excised despite being in glaring need of another take. It’s amateurish at best, hopelessly pandering at worst.

The film finally pulls itself together with the introduction of Bradley Cooper’s character, who gets an entrance that treats him like an actual king. With all the fanfare his appearance gets, you’d think that Joy had resurrected Elvis. It’s deeply mystifying, but Cooper does a terrific job injecting the proceedings with raw, unfiltered life, finally giving Lawrence something concrete to play off. Up to this point, she’s been performing in a vacuum and she finally gets to blossom, giving her role an anxious, immediate humanity.

Joy’s newfound coherence and quality doesn’t make it an exquisite film – a series of obligatory and profoundly hollow melodrama beats see to that. But the film finally comes into its own, finishing off its lot with engaging pizzazz, even managing to make a QVC infomercial breathe with crackling energy. Here, the camera is actually awake, transforming its initial lunatic aspirations into a more straightforward and satisfying story.

All in all, Joy isn’t terribly recommendable, though it’s a light enough trifle that it’s not a trial to sit through. The vastly improved second half effectively cancels out the first half’s muddled tangle, resulting in a film that leaves exactly no impression. I’ll take this over a bad impression any day, but I can’t help but wish I got more out of it.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1107

Oh Mandy

Year: Who even knows?

Director: Jonathan Levine

Cast: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A quick caveat: Because this is a slasher movie, I'm going to stomp all over spoilers here. With these films it's not really what happens but how it happens that matters. If you care about spoilers, just check out the TL;DR and come back later.

Let's discuss that whole "year" thing, shall we? All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a slasher flick produced in 2006 that then proceeded immediately nowhere. Over years and years this film struggled to get on its feet until it finally managed to get a limited release seven years later on September 6, 2013.

Over the years, the hype has built and built because there's nothing the horror community loves more than a Little Slasher That Could. I myself have been following its progress for some months now, unfortunately missing it in theaters (C'mon, a one week release in the middle of a challenging semester? Give me a chance!) and falling into a deep depression when RedBox promised me it was in stock then proceeded to claim it never existed.

So was it all worth it?

Not at all, really. But it was OK. 

Kind of like this guy's torso.

In the grand tradition of slasher films everywhere, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane begins nine months before the main action during a terrible accident. Douchey jock Dylan (Adam Powell) is having a pool party and invites Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), a goody goody who, over the summer, has been bestowed a gift from the Puberty Fairy. 

She drags along her dorky friend Emmet (Michael Welch aka Bella's annoying friend Mike from Twilight, which is oddly prescient considering Heard's overwhelming resemblance to Kristen Stewart) who then talks Dylan into jumping into the pool from his roof to try and impress her.

It does not go well.

And it would be hard to tell if she's impressed anyway considering that she gives off about as much emotion as that chimney.

Nine months later, she is invited to a weekend ranch party (those are wild, I hear) in the middle of nowhere by some of her Meat. I mean friends.

There's Red (Aaron Himmelstein), the stoner whose family owns the ranch and is in love with Mandy Lane; Bird (Edwin Hodge, whose best known role is as the Bloody Stranger in The Purge), the obligatory black friend who is in love with Mandy Lane; his best friend Jake (Luke Grimes) who looks oddly like Harry Styles and is in love with Mandy Lane; and Garth (Anson Mount), the hot older ranch hand who against all odds is in love with Mandy Lane.

There's also Chloe (Whitney Able), the requisite coked out blonde bitch whose primary means of travel seems to be tripping; Marlin (Melissa Price), the slutty brunette who flashes her boobs at random gas station workers. And of course, Mandy Lane. Who is certainly pretty, but that doesn't make up for her deficit of any discernible human characteristics. She is a virgin. She doesn't do drugs. She has boobs.

That's about it. And she runs in slow motion a lot. Basically the film is entirely comprised of shots of Mandy Lane Baywatching around the ranch interspersed with violent deaths from time to time.

According to the filmmakers, running is an adequate substitute for personality.

So it turns out that Mandy Lane's old dorky friend Emmet is orchestrating the murders (this isn't even a spoiler because they show his face more or less immediately - an uncommon move in a slasher like this) decked out with a beanie and a shotgun.

The plot pukes along in a seemingly random and inconsistent manner, almost as if the writers were just flipping through a dictionary and incorporating whatever word they landed on into the script. The lights go out because one of the boys pulled out the fuse as a prank (even though he was clearly in the room during the outage and couldn't have done so). They send Bird to the emergency generator which is just chillin' under a tree in a field. Two teens stop their escape attempt to make out in front of the car they should be using to get the hell out of there. There's hella lesbian tension that goes nowhere. And my personal favorite exchange, when Garth laments Mandy Lane's beauty and complains that she's too young for him.

Garth: "If only you had a sister ten years older..." 

Mandy Lane: "I have a cousin! She's 21."

I know that can't possibly be what she meant but I like to imagine that Mandy Lane is actually 11 years old this whole time.

I mean, that's what I looked like when I was 11.

So there is some fun to be had in the inept corners of the plot (including a truly hilarious scene where a kid in a lake has a gun pointed at him and immediately ducks underwater like an ostrich in the sand), but at some point it all gets tangled up in the big "Why?"

It is revealed that Mandy Lane and Emmet are working together on this when she stabs Chloe. For some reason, they both have apparently committed to offing themselves right after their murder spree, but all of a sudden she changes her mind and turns on Emmet. The film tries to force her into the part of a quippy Final Girl but it just doesn't mesh considering that not two minutes ago she was knifing her friend in cold blood.

And there's loads of plot holes and loose ends, the most damning of which is "Why these people?" There is no motive for the mass murder or the suicide or Mandy Lane's eventual betrayal. The film as advertised could have been a cool story about a jealous young man offing potential romantic rivals but somewhere along the line it unraveled into the moth-ridden musty sweater of a film you see before you.

Boys will be boys, I guess.

It's actually a pretty great slasher throwback in the sense that it's not really very good at all.

The substandard production values remind me of some of the trashier Census Bloodbath entertainments in a genuinely grubby way that I haven't seen this side of Y2K. The video is all a little overexposed and washed out and the audio is about as clear as listening to music playing in somebody else's headphones from across the room.

In fact, for about half the movie I couldn't even tell what names they were calling each other and thought we were watching a film about Garp, Fred, Burt, and Marley. They didn't even half enough money for pretty boys, which is shocking but refreshing for a film from 2006. So it's all very genuinely, almost heartwarmingly bad (which is a quality I greatly admire in this sick world of intentionally bad fare) and the gore is pretty neat when it shows up.

But the most noteworthy thing about the film is Amber Heard's performance. A full two years before Twilight, she had the whole "hair twist, bite lip, blank stare" thing down pat. I swear it's like watching Bella Swan in a slasher film. Which also begs the question: We all know KStew's performance as Bella is not so great - but could it also be a rip-off?

Can a just world exist that contains two Bella Swans?

Perhaps we are better off not knowing. 

Killer: Emmet (Michael Welch)

Final Girl: Mandy Lane (Amber Heard)

Best Kill: Marlin gets a shotgun shoved in her mouth. But instead of pulling the trigger, he shoves it in deeper, crushing her windpipe and severing her jaw. Totally unexpected and cool gore.

Sign of the Times: An American Idol reference; A girl gets excited about her new belly button ring; somebody's emoticons look like this: :).

Scariest Moment: The LAKE SNAKE.

Weirdest Moment: Marlin gives Jake a handjob under a map in the backseat of a car during a conversation with their friends.

Champion Dialogue: "I admire you so. Will you protect us from the bandits?"

Body Count: 8

1. Dylan hits his head on the edge of the pool.
2. Jake is shot with a shotgun.
3. Marlin's jaw is broken with a shotgun.
4. Bird is stabbed to death.
5. Garth is shot with a shotgun.
6. Red is shot to death.
7. Chloe is stabbed in the stomach.
8. Emmet is shot and decapitated. 

TL;DR: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a genuinely bad slasher film, but that's what makes it fun.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1437