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

Illegal Aliens

Year: 2015

Director: Andy & Lana Wachowski

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne

Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Wachowskis' second film, The Matrix is an incredible sci-fi action movie, mixing theology, weird science, and modern computer analytics into a heady concoction of modern cinema. Their newest feature, Jupiter Ascending, combines many of those same elements into a garbled, nondescript mass of pixels. Sometimes people should quit while they're ahead.

I would say "quit before they put Channing Tatum in antigrav rollerblades," but that's a bit  too specific.

At the very least, Jupiter Ascending means well, and we can't fault it for that. Telling the story of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), the daughter of a Russian immigrant who was born over open water and thus without a country, who discovers that she is the reincarnated spirit of a space queen, the film attempts to cover important issues regarding racism, environmentalism, capitalist greed, and universal morality. What it ends up being is a dour romantic comedy tarted up as an overwrought space opera, and we can fault it for that.

Jupiter discovers that her DNA sequencing is exactly the same as a murdered space monarch, who belongs to a family that worships genetics and owns planets, harvesting their populations to create an elixir of immortality. If that sentence was hard to get through, imagine being pummeled with it for 2 hours and 7 minutes. A variety of side-switching and double-crossing ensues, but what the plot boils down to is that the evil Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) wants to prevent Jupiter from inheriting his mother's title, which includes the Earth - a planet he is keen on harvesting. With the help of space cop/wolfkin rogue Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), Jupiter needs to play the intergalactic game of thrones until she either wins or dies, saving the Earth in the process.

Did that make sense? No. Do I care? No. I'm just trying to do justice to what it was like to watch it.

Jupiter Ascending is spectacularly muddled, tossing in unexplained plot points at random and attempting to smooth them over with patently ridiculous pseudo-science. Honestly, it sounds campy and fun enough: the Russian mob, magical bee powers, and genetic reincarnation all flit across the screen during the course of the story's tenure. But the real problem with the film is that it plays all of its weirdness out with deadly serious intent.

The difference between the film that Jupiter Ascending wants to be and the film that it is is staggering. Anything exciting or pulpy is smothered with unending, piteously hopeless feints at drama and profundity. It's a perpetual motion machine of self-important mediocrity.

Kind of like how Hollywood convinces itself that this type of CGI is "totally cool" and "definitely believable, keep up the good work."

Jupiter Ascending is bad, you guys. Real bad.

Plot points unfurl at random times from inscrutable angles, only to vanish before you can focus your eyes on them.

The monochromatic color scheme grates against your vision, preventing you from being able to discern anything other than vague motion and then abruptly lurching into hideous, searing teal and orange because that's how movies are supposed to work, right? 

Eddie Redmayne can not pull off his bargain basement Charlize Theron impression, Channing Tatum proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's infinitely better suited to comedy, and Mila Kunis somehow manages to escape making any kind of impression at all.

All the action scenes incessantly repeat the same three tricks ad nauseum like the film is being played on an Atari joystick, and the major climactic scene of the film is repeated in the exact same way immediately after. It's a grinding, churning bore with some truly embarrassing CGI and color grading.

Orange on orange. Inspired.

There's enough effort and genuine personality poured into it that it's not a complete waste of time at any level, but there's no getting around the fact that it's damn near unwatchable as a narrative film. I would not recommend Jupiter Ascending to any casual film fan, unless their goal was to intimately understand the arrhythmic beating of the Wachowskis' collective heart.

In that regard it is a damn humanistic masterpiece. In anything else, it's an overbaked trifle that is better swept under the rug.

TL;DR: Jupiter Ascending is pure, overwrought, self-important nonsense, but there's a heaving personality behind it that's hard to ignore.

Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 745

Mexico Star Theater

Year: 2014

Director: Jorge R. Gutierrez

Cast: Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Hollywood is making a change. Because it's Hollywood, it's not an enormous change and it's more than a little half-hearted. Because it's Hollywood, the change is driven by utterly mercenary motivations. But also because it's Hollywood, it has stumbled across a realization that, with a little polishing, could change the world of media as we know it.

That world-changing discovery seems like a simple one and it is: Latino people go to the movies. In fact, they go to the movies a lot. Not surprising, considering just how diverse the American population is, though Hollywood prefers to ignore this fact. But studios have finally begun to take notice of this heretofore unplumbed demographic, making movies that cater to - get this - audiences who aren't just white people.

One of the first truly high-profile movies with this demographic in mind was Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, the Latin-American spin-off of the decade's most popular horror franchise. But behind this film lie many others that have slowly been shifting the tides. Which now brings us to one of the first wide release Latino-themed kids' movies - The Book of Life.

Where was this guy when I was doing my Sexiest Animated Characters list?

Book of Life begins with a framework narrative that's essentially useless, but as it informs the aesthetic of the entire film - and oh, what an aesthetic it is - it's only fair to begin there. Mary Beth (Christina Applegate) is a puckish museum docent who takes a gaggle of detention kids on a field trip to a special secret room containing the Book of Life, which is full of stories and legends about Mexico. She uses a set of dolls to tell the kids one of the stories, so the bulk of the film is animated like wooden puppetry - more on that later.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST ACT - IF YOU SAW THE TRAILER YOU'RE FINE The chosen story centers around two mythical figures: La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman) - the rulers of the two underworlds, the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten respectively. On el Día de los Muertos, they make a fateful wager. Xibalba is desperate to escape the realm of forgotten souls, so he proposes that each of them place a bet on Maria (Zoe Saldana), a young girl in the nearby town with two best friends/suitors. Xibalba bets on Joaquin (Channing Tatum), a cocky explorer who lives in the shadow of his valiant father, and La Muerte vouches for Manolo (Diego Luna), a sensitive musician whose father expects him to pick up his family's bullfighting legacy.

Although Maria is clearly smitten with Manolo's fumbling charm and put off by Joaquin's egocentric antics, she'd really rather hang out with her pet pig. But Manolo proves his worth, not quite soon enough after Joaquin proposes. After Xibalba pulls a devilish trick, Manolo is sent to the Land of the Remembered and must find his way back to the land of the living and reclaim his true love.

Although he did snag a great look just in time for Halloween so it's not all bad.

It's a children's film and a legend-based tale so once it settles in, it's quite simple to follow. Parents want their kids to be something other than their dreams, but individuality wins out and everyone learns the importance of being themselves. Boilerplate kid movie stuff, really. It's everywhere but the plot that Book of Life rises above the average family-friendly fare.

I've already mentioned the film's Latino themes, but the truly astonishing part is that it depicts a culture with customs, music, legends, values, and aesthetics much different from our own without being hideously offensive! There are some dubious elements that squeak by (including having only two actors of Mexican descent in the lead cast, a smattering white-culture signifiers for Mexico, and the fact that the entire story is framed by a puppet show put on for some dumb-ass white kids), but overall the film shines as a beacon of cinematic diversity with Mexican director Jorge Guiterrez and producer Guillermo del Toro preventing things from getting too out of hand. 

And even those rough patches are smoothed over with an ample supporting cast including Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, and Plácido Domingo, along with strong cultural musicality combining banda and mariachi styles with modern pop-musical lyrics and themes. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see a film presented by somebody other than fussy old white dudes. Their contributions are numerous, it's true, but it's time to let somebody, anybody else take the stand.

And now for something completely different: Protagonists who don't have the delicate complexion of a glass of skim milk.

OK, now that we have the boring but vastly important stuff out of the way, let's focus on how utterly fun this movie is. Regular kiddy movie tropes (an animal sidekick; a Greek chorus) are turned on their heads (an adorable pig is the sidekick; the chorus is a group of hilarious nuns), boisterous characters burst with vividly colorful life, and the music doesn't suck! The great thing about the soundtrack is that it so easily could have drained the vigor from the film but instead injects it with energy. 

The Book of Life tends to parlay in anachronisms, a risky venture that works more often than it should. A mariachi Mumford & Sons cover? Strange but it works perfectly. Acoustic Elvis on a Mexican guitar? Lovely. A Radiohead song? Not so much, but it made sense at the time. The three original songs likewise manage to match this tone of marrying children's musical standards with Mexican instrumentation to blissful perfection. On top of it all, Diego Luna's voice - while a tad rough around the edges - provides the perfect DIY kick to these lovably offbeat arrangements.

All of this rolls into a film that's tirelessly heartfelt and kooky while at the same time buoyantly reveling in Mexican culture to its fullest extent. This is portrayed nowhere better than the animation itself, which depicts rickety wooden figures with grace and artistry, pumping them full of vibrant, colorful, joyous life. The film's portrayal of the endless fiestas of the Land of the Remembered is an explosion of brassy, rich, eye-popping technicolor dreamscapes as far as the eye can see.

And the attention to detail in unmatched in modern computer-animated film. Once you notice how Xibalba's pupils are little skulls or the way La Muerte's candles delicately float around the train of her dress, the film will have you in its thrall completely - assuming you have the capacity for childish wonder necessary to take it all in.

And compared to Reel FX Animation's last feature film - 2013's Free Birds, the step up here is about the height of the Tower of Babel.

And the acting is top notch, especially Diego Luna with a brave, limit-stretching vocal performance and Tatum in yet another pristine comic role and WHY AREN'T WE LETTING HIM DO MORE COMEDIES! Personally, I could do without Ice Cube in a comic relief part, but it's not as intrusive as you'd think.

All said, The Book of Life would be an utter masterpiece if it weren't for just a few minute stumbles. As I stated before, the story is a bit too wooden, overusing hoary thematic tropes. And the post-Frozen quasi-feminism doesn't ring as true as it could considering that Maria still tends to be a damsel in distress. But all in all, in the field of children's animation as well as that of 2014 cinema itself, you can hardly do better than this vivid multi-cultural extravaganza.

TL;DR: The Book of Life is an eye-popping experience of grandiose proportions that doesn't mistreat its cultural heritage.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Absolutely yes. Don't give Ouija the satisfaction.

Word Count: 1328

I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 22

Year: 2014

Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Dynamic duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller are tearing up Hollywood at the moment, having already turned three terrible ideas into immensely entertaining films with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie.

Cloudy, an adaptation of a children's book with a modicum of plot, became a pun-filled adventure comedy. 21 Jump Street, a film reboot of a classic late-80's television show, had surprisingly fresh humor and heart. And The Lego Movie turned what should have just been a cheap cash-in shill into one of the best animated comedies of the decade with a central moral about the nature of creativity.

So the pressure was on them when it came time to do the unthinkable - plan a sequel to a comedy reboot of a classic late-80's television show. 22 Jump Street might just be the weakest of their endeavors, but it still delivers what one has come to expect from one of their films - a delightful comedy wrapped around a startlingly firm central core.

And for once I'm not referring to Channing Tatum's abs.

22 Jump Street follows youthful undercover agents Schmidt (Jonah Hill, looking admittedly slightly too old to play the part, even with the film's comedic emphasis on his age) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) to college after their undercover high school antics in the first film. Their mission is to discover the source of the dangerous Whyphy drug that is circulating the local campus. Once again the two agents find their own niche - Jenko with the football-playing frat boys and Schmidt with the hipster art crowd.

But things begin to fall apart when Jenko befriends frat leader and potential suspect Zook (Wyatt Russell) and Schmidt fears that it will ruin their investigation as well as their friendship. There's also some business with potential love interest Maya (Amber Stevens), but that never coalesces into anything more than a series of gags that - though funny - tend not to have anything to do with the matter at hand. She has about as much effect on the plot as the bean bag chair, which - come to think of it - might actually get more screen time.

Hill and Tatum reprise their roles with gusto and in fact, I maintain with absolutely no trace of irony that Jenko is the best role Channing Tatum has ever played. Better even than comedy superstar Hill's slightly wan Schmidt, Tatum embraces the blind jocky enthusiasm of Jenko with verve and skill, proving that he might fare much better in the business should he decide to stick with comedy rather than wan romance or popcorn action flicks.

The boys at the center impress, although they are no longer surrounded by the stellar supporting ensemble of the first film, something which really tamps down on the effervescent humor. Russell and Stevens have their share of moments, but they are nothing compared to what came before. In fact, Rob Riggle and Dave Franco's brief cameos immediately outshine any of these newcomers' output. Only Jillian Bell as Maya's put-upon roommate Mercedes does anything of interest, bubbling relentlessly forth from the screen like a force of nature.

An adorable blonde force of nature.

So no, it doesn't capture the newness and utter joy of 21 Jump Street, but that was never going to happen. And the slick music video sensibility of the production design and cinematography tends to bring you out of the film somewhat, especially when the soundtrack overwhelms the dialogue to such a point it becomes clear that the Hot New Track is more important than what jokes are being told (one such track, "Turn Down For What" having the unfortunate potential to instantly date the film when it fizzles out of its 2.7 seconds of popularity).

This is an unfortunate new trend in Hollywood comedies (last seen by Yours Truly in the remarkably unbearable That Awkward Moment) and likely has more to do with studio tampering than the work of the two directors, who I hold in too much esteem to think they stood for the idea of burying their jokes. Anyway, I hope it goes away soon and think it best not to spend too much time dwelling on it, lest they catch on.

What 22 Jump Street does have in spades is electrifying meta humor. Nearly every single joke is geared toward one level of self-awareness or another, whether it's the fact that the characters are nearly always on the cusp of being aware they're in a movie, the more cloying "this is a sequel" jokes that are beaten into the ground with a baseball bat, then pile-drived into the planet's core, erupting in a volcano of meta that showers the entire universe, or the subtle and infinitely clever gags like the one concerning Tatum's previous role in White House Down.

See above: "Popcorn action flicks"

In short, some of it works, some of it doesn't. Fortunately the jokes featured most frequently and at the forefront are the kind that work. And it wouldn't be a Lord and Miller film without a totally unexpected and cleverly thematic philosophical manifesto buried within the comedy, and this film is no different. In fact, it's utterly brilliant - elevating the repeated meta gag of "sameness" as the centerpiece for the entire film.

What starts it off is a cheesy joke Ron Swanson makes about how important it is to do the exact same thing as last time. Yes, it's just a meta joke about being a sequel, but that idea branches out throughout the film into a startlingly dense web. It's Miller and Lord's way of dealing with the pressure of handling a sequel to a highly successful film and it's genius.

(THEME SPOILERS? ARE THOSE A THING?) When Jenko makes friends with Zook, a man exactly similar to himself, he begins to act upon that theme in earnest. Sure doing the same thing can be comforting and desirable, but he soon discovers how empty it is to just mindlessly repeat the same things over and over again. A central tenet of the film is that it is perfectly acceptable to repeat oneself, but a twist to the formula is absolutely necessary. It's the only way to grow and change as a person and to stop from dragging yourself and others down. 

Leave it to our boys to turn their funny meta sequel for a TV reboot into a musing about the nature of mindless repetition. So there's the twist that justifies the entire thing. Seriously, the pieces all click together like an episode of Arrested Development on the fourth rewatch. It's an impressive endeavor emphasized within the film at every turn, sometimes quite strongly and obviously (like the characters that constantly reprimand the agents for not doing the same thing) and sometimes with delicate subtlety (like the sets of twins that pepper the film in various supporting roles.).

Hell, the film even features twin statues.

Because of the dedicated efforts of the directing team, they have once again achieved a resounding success. 22 Jump Street is not a Kubrickian puzzle box of a film, but it's a dreadfully smart sequel that, while never quite as funny as the original, is definitely worth a watch. If you loved 21 and want more of the same, you'll get it, but with that oh so delicious twist of lemon.

TL;DR: 22 Jump Street is an astoundingly clever film but ultimately isn't quite funny enough to obviate its more intrusive elements.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Honestly, no. Wait for RedBox and do a double feature at home sometime. But definitely check it out before the year is over.

Word Count: 1300