10 Movies That Are Popular For All The Wrong Reasons
6. Magic Mike
Now in fairness, who is anyone to tell other people how to enjoy a Magic Mike movie of all things?
Yet many eyebrows were raised when Steven Soderbergh was first announced to be directing a movie about male strippers, even if his involvement indicated there'd be much more going on beneath the surface. And duly, there was.
Nobody's going to tell you that you shouldn't savour Channing Tatum and his gloriously chiselled pals gyrating around throughout the movie's pulse-quickening 110 minutes, but what ultimately makes Magic Mike more than a fun but forgettable slice of cheesecake is its surprisingly muscular script.
Magic Mike's story unfolds in the shadow of 2008's Great Recession, with Mike (Tatum) working as a stripper to fund his dream of running a custom furniture business.
That spectre looms large over the entire movie, whether audiences want to believe it or not.
By backing the sexy strip show with so much genuinely nuanced character development, we're compelled to view Mike and his pals as more than mere sex objects - as also people hustling to make their dreams come true amid major economic anxiety.
And this throughline continues into both sequels, with Mike setting up his furniture business in Magic Mike XXL before it all goes up in smoke in the recent Magic Mike's Last Dance, as the financial impact of the pandemic takes its toll.
That Soderbergh so expertly balances the raunch with legitimately satisfying character-driven storytelling in the first movie in particular is its true triumph, and it doesn't get nearly enough credit for that.