Magic Mike," director Steven Soderbergh's peep into the world of male strippers, almost feels like a response to his 2009 film "The Girlfriend Experience," which looked at online escort services. Despite starring wildly popular porn starlet Sasha Grey, the film was cool, cerebral and decidedly asexual; it also did lousy at the box office. With "Magic Mike," Soderbergh loosens up and delivers what is expected in a movie on male strippers: sex, laughs, six-pack abs and thongs — lots of thongs.
Soderbergh developed the story with star Channing Tatum, who himself worked for a time as a male stripper while struggling as an up-and-coming actor/model. Although Tatum is quick to point out this is not a true-life story, it bears all the well-observed detail of real, lived experience, i.e., it's not the male version of "Showgirls."
Comparisons with "Boogie Nights" — also set in a dodgy, sexually loose subculture — are swift and apt: Adam (Alex Pettyfer) is a shiftless young barely-employable guy whose construction site coworker Mike (Tatum) helps him get into an upscale nightclub to party. Once inside, Adam is surprised to find that Mike moonlights there as a stripper, and is even more surprised when he's thrown on stage as a last-minute replacement for the passed-out Tarzan (Kevin Nash).