96% of Magic Mike XXL's opening weekend audience was female. Ninety-six percent. Hardly surprising given the the movies content (it is the male stripper sequel), this means the public opinion on the film is hardly the varied assessment you'd expect in the days of IMDb, RottenTomatoes and Letterboxd. Which is a real shame because Magic Mike XXL is a real treat, no matter what gets your motors going. Naturally XXL does feature a lot of writhing and gyration, but there's more to it than simple titillation. It's a funny, engaging drama, and for the most part it feels very much like a musical, only with the song-and-dance numbers replaced with stripteases. Sometimes things can feel a bit too much, particularly in its stripper convention finale (seriously), but for the most part it's never too awkward for a male viewer. Besides, the final act is only so top heavy with stripping because for vast stretches the film is looking at the men behind the g-strings. The first movie was praised for bringing this balance, of course, but here it's much more atypical; Mike was wrestling with his soul in the original, but here it's about facing the passage of time and accepting one's age Nowhere is the jovial handling of this all better seen that in the convenience store sequence, where Joe Manganiello's character uses snacks and drinks for a lustful rendition of I Want It That Way. Seriously, that's one of the year's best scenes.
