Magic Mike

This is another film that should have been better, but at least it proved that Channing Tatum isn't a total dud. He does have some talent and can be confident, traits he was sorely lacking in The Vow.
Here, Tatum is Michael Lane, aka Magic Mike, who is part entrepreneur, part stripper. In addition to his stripper gig, he is also a roofer and apparently also has a small business dealing with cars as well. But his dream is to make custom furniture, and though his creations do look good, they are really nothing more than rumble he finds along the beach and puts together to create a table with a glass sheet on top. However, when he visits a bank towards the middle of the film, he can't get approved for the loan he needs because his credit score is awful, but he has money, tons of it as he gets paid in cash every night.
The main plot of the film is when Mike takes the young (only 19) Adam under his wing and teaches him the lay of the land (almost literally). Adam becomes a stripper and is quite popular, just as Mike and Dallas (Matthew McConaghey) expected. However, Adam is really nothing more than a loser with a caring sister, Brooke (Cody Horn, a blond Anna Kendrick). He got into a fight with his college football coach and thus tossed away a football scholarship; he's a real keeper, ladies. Once in the stripper business, Adam also gets involved with the ecstasy business as well, much to Mike's chargrin. In fact, Mike tells him to never give the drugs to a girl he doesn't know. Actually, he shouldn't be giving drugs to any girls, whether he knows them or not. However, once they run away from the party where they both were stripping, as they were getting beat up over Adam's actions, Adam leaves his bag with the large remainder of the drugs so now he owes his dealer a ton of money. Money he does not have. Instead, Mike pays it, just so Adam is not physically harmed. Ten thousand dollars, all for a jerk who does not truly appreciate what Mike did for him. Adam takes his gesture for granted, though he swears he will pay him back, but I personally doubt it.
Mike is also still getting a grip on his own life, and must deal with the fact that his main source of income is moving to Miami, but he will not be getting the cut of the business that he feels he deserves and in the end, leaves the stripping business behind. Which is good, as Dallas took advantage of his best, and most buff stripper. But then again, you never really knew what Dallas's big plans were, as he was the one who said that he would just let his kid watch the money channel all day long to figure out how to become rich, that school was nothing more than a waste of his time.
Then there are the women. For a while Mike tries to have a relationship with Joanna (Olivia Munn) who enjoys psychology and threesomes, but all along, she had a fiance. Then there is Brooke (Cody Horn), Adam's responsible medical assistant sister who is dating this boring guy, Paul, but luckily soon he is out of the picture, leaving room for her to get together with Mike, which does happen, though once again, she allows him to sleep with her too early in the relationship, just as all the female characters in the film do. They are merely objects. Another stripper, Ken (Matt Bomer) even lets Adam touch his wife's boobs, and she just lets the young kid get away with it. And everyone lets Adam drink alcohol even though he's too young, which is illegal, just for the record. Yet, the film was still decent as Tatum was in full control of his role, but ultimately, it just wasn't enough to save the film. Grade: B