If you told me when I started this blog that I’d eventually write an essay about how the male entertainers in the movie Magic Mike XXL are exceptional examples of male positivity, I’d have said, “Yeah, I can see that. When do I write this essay?”
And you’d say, “After rewatching Magic Mike XXL in January 2022.”
“Cool!” I’d say. “Hey, since you seem to have some sort of prescient power, what happens in the next couple years? I guess if I’m still writing the blog, it must be going well. Did Erin and I have any really great swinger adventures? Maybe try a hotel takeover or a lifestyle vacation somewhere?”
You’d give a knowing smile and just say, “I can’t give you any details, but let’s just say the next couple years are…world changing.” You have a mischievous sense of humor. I’ve always liked that about you.
What you didn’t mention in any of that was that Magic Mike XXL has some progressive, female empowering messages in it as well. But I guess you know me well enough to know I’d figure that out as well.
If You’ve Never Seen Magic Mike…
It’s…OK. I’d recommend it for the hot guys, awesome dancing, and watching ladies go absolutely bonkers over the hot guys doing the awesome dancing. The story comes from real experiences Channing Tatum had as a male performer. Overall, it ends up being a sad movie in which the main character, Mike (played by Channing), tries to help out a young guy, Adam, and ends up getting screwed over for it.
By the end of the movie, the dance venue Mike’s been working at is moving to a different city and instead of going with, he just walks out. He’s already spent most of his considerable savings buying Adam out of trouble with some drug dealers, so his dream of opening up his own custom furniture business is effectively sidelined. But he’s got a girlfriend (Adam’s sister Brooke) and he’s left the party life of adult entertainment behind him.
There are some interesting commentaries on the party scene and how people who are in professions that are adult entertainment or adjacent to adult entertainment are not looked favorably upon by “reputable” businesses. I use quotes there because banks probably screw more people every day than all the sex workers combined.
But overall, Mike was doing well as a male dancer. He didn’t need to quit to get away from drugs and alcohol because of concerns over his own use. He had a business plan and was working toward it as he made money dancing. If the banks won’t give him a loan, then it makes sense to keep dancing.
It seemed needlessly dark, and our main character ends the movie worse than he started despite being a decent guy.
The Other Characters
The movie focuses on Mike, Adam, and Brooke. The other Kings of Tampa (the name of the male entertainment troupe) don’t get much screen time other than dance montages and being in the background at parties. The troupe’s owner, Dallas (played by Matthew McConaughey), gets screen time but no character development. He’s a pompous dick who keeps promising to uplift his dancers by giving them ownership in future ventures, but he’s mostly a greedy, selfish asshole. Which is why Mike walks out.
If You’ve Never Seen Magic Mike XXL…
This movie is a delight! It is full of great dance scenes, awesome character development, one of the best depictions of drug use (MDMA) that I’ve seen, and is a much cheerier movie being a buddy comedy road trip film. The ending is less definitive—we don’t really know what the future holds for the Kings of Tampa—but there’s a positive vibe to it. We are left with the sense that these guys are going to do well moving forward, and it will be because of and alongside each other.
The plot is simple: Three years after Dallas takes the Kings of Tampa to Miami, they have returned to Tampa to start a road trip to Myrtle Beach to attend a male entertainment convention. Dallas and Adam have gone overseas to start a new venture in Europe, and with Dallas gone, this is the last ride of the Kings of Tampa. There is no venue to go back to.
Mike, who walked out on the Kings without even saying goodbye, has spent the last three years getting his custom carpentry business off the ground. He’s successful enough that it’s paying the bills. But for reasons he (and the audience) will never understand, Brooke has left him. He finds out about the road trip from his old friends when they trick him into coming to a party. We’ll get into how and why he is tricked later on. But he realizes a road trip with his bros is exactly what he needs to get his groove back.
And he was right.
The Odyssey
Thus begins the road trip, which might have parallels to Odysseus’s voyage home. Realizing that the Kings need to reset their group mojo and find the right headspace for this adventure, the first night sees the Kings of Tampa joining the party at Mad Mary’s club (the cyclops?).
The second day, the group does MDMA (the lotus eaters?) and have a massive bloom of creativity and inspiration that leads them to ditch their old dance routines and costumes and start fresh. Alas, Tobias crashes the fro-yo truck they were journeying in (we’ll get into why they were in a fro-yo truck shortly; trust me, it’s relevant!), so Mike suggests the group go see an old friend of his, Rome (to whom all roads lead…and also Circe?).
Rome (played by Jada Pinkett Smith) owns a club at which Mike dance-battles one of her dancers. Who wins? The girls in the club, obviously. And us, the audience. But in doing so, Mike and Rome settle some unfinished business, and the Kings of Tampa meet fellow spiritual brothers who will later show up at the convention.
The Kings go from the club to meet up with Megan, a girl they met the night before at Mad Mary’s afterparty. But Megan isn’t the only one with friends in the house. Megan’s mom Nancy is having a girl’s night of her own and when these older women (the sirens?) meet the Kings, well, they just insist the boys sit and drink with them!
They make it to the conference the next day, prep their props and routines, and then kill it at the show (Odysseus’s homecoming?).
The Main Characters
Seriously, I cannot tell you how much of my mental space this movie has taken since we watched it last week. I’ve been playing around with how best to present my thoughts and showcase how oddly progressive and spectacular the movie is.
This is what I came up with: I’m going to introduce the non-Mike main characters and explain the issues that each overcomes due to Mike being on this trip.
Yes, Mike is the healer-king, like freaking Aragorn but with mad dance skills instead of sword fighting prowess. It’s not that Mike is the only person in the world who can fix these issues. He’s not a wizard nor deus ex machina. No, what this movie shows is that a circle of brothers needs each member for everyone to be whole. This circle has been missing their friend Mike, and when he returns to the tribe and adds his voice to those around the fire, the tribe is unstoppable.
Because that’s what brotherhood and masculinity is. Showing up for your brothers when they need you. Especially when they don’t even know they need you. And this movie shows that without being preachy about it.
Big Dick Richie (BDR)
Played by Joe Manganiello (from True Blood!), “Big Dick” Richie is so named because he has a HUGE dick. While a source of amusement in the first movie, we actually discover it is a bit of a problem for the man. Despite being an absolute hunk of delicious manmeat (that being one of Erin’s contributions to this post), the poor guy cannot get laid because chicks are scared of the size of his dick.
Richie suffers from two issues. He believes he’ll never find a girl to settle down with (“the glass slipper” that will fit his “foot”) and he lacks confidence in his ability to perform dancically. (Is dancically a word? Why the hell not!).
BDR has a routine that slays with the ladies: He starts dressed like a firefighter and undresses to the Kiss song Hotter Than Hell. However, BRD has a fire phobia. He’s never wanted to be a firefighter. He doesn’t even like that song. He’s an NSYNC fan (oh yes, ladies, he is!).
But he cannot fathom the thought of not sticking to his set routine, which was created long ago by Dallas. He doesn’t believe he can do anything else because he lacks faith in his ability to create something for himself.
Mike challenges BDR to go into a gas-station store and make the girl at the counter smile. Which leads to one of Erin’s favorite scenes in the movie.
And thus BDR gets his confidence.
Tito
Played by Adam Rodriguez, Tito is trying to start his own business with his boy Tobias (the King of Tampa’s DJ who’s with them for part of this trip): a mobile artisanal probiotic frozen yogurt truck. Tito serves his yogurt out of one side. Tobias spins records out of the other. “The whole thing is like a healthy mobile block party.”
But as we learn later on, this has been a work in progress for some time. Tito is stuck in “market research” land, too scared to take the plunge and put the plan in motion.
Where Mike steps in is not just an added voice of confidence in Tito’s plan—which he has, all the Kings of Tampa have the utmost of confidence and support. But Mike is already running his own successful small business. Knowing Tito is worried, he offers to look over the numbers, help him with the details Tito doesn’t yet have experience with.
Tarzan
Played by Kevin Nash, Tarzan is much older than the other Kings. The movie starts with Tarzan calling Mike, saying that the Kings are back in Tampa for a wake because “Dallas is gone.” It turns out there was no wake because Dallas wasn’t dead, he was just overseas, leaving the Kings hanging.
Tarzan admits that he embellished the truth because if they just invited Mike to a party, he probably wouldn’t show. But a wake, Mike would be there for that.
Tarzan doesn’t actually have a problem that Mike helps him with, not like the other guys. Which is actually noted in the movie in an oddly meta moment. As if realizing he is in a buddy-comedy road trip movie, Mike points out that he and Tarzan never had a coming-to-peace-with-Mike-leaving moment the way Mike had with the other Kings, leading to one my favorite exchanges in the movie.
I just love how open they are with each other!
But, not to say Tarzan doesn’t have great character development. We learn in this movie he is a painter (oil and canvas mostly). He did the custom paint job on Tito and Tobias’s truck.
In the first movie, he takes too much GHB and passes out before his routine, which is a common enough occurrence that Dallas shouts “Again?” when it happens. But in this movie, when offered the MDMA, he turns it down. This shows a degree of responsibility and growth between movies. It’s such a small bit that it could easily go unnoticed particularly if you forget the GHB issue from the first movie.
He also tosses out this bit of wisdom:
I love Tarzan. He’s one of my favorite characters.
Ken
Played by Matt Bomer (who was in Glee!), Ken is probably in the best position for life after this convention. He’s been in a few commercials, has an agent who’s got him doing YouTube videos, and is a Level 3 Reiki healer. Likely he’s a yogi and could guide meditation classes.
As you might be able to guess, Ken is my favorite of the Kings. In fact, he’s my hero and idol. If I could be one-quarter of the guy Ken is, I feel like I will have achieved something in my life.
He’s self-aware but still realistically humanly flawed. When Mike shows up to join the road trip, it is obvious that Ken has issues with it. So much so, that Mike takes an off-hand Oprah quote as a passive-aggressive dig (which it was). Tired of dealing with a moody Ken, Mike does the typical guy thing: He tells Ken to hit him.
What I love about this is that Ken tries to walk away and fails. I don’t love that he failed, but his failure makes him human. He’s fallen into one of the traps of toxic masculinity—using violence to express emotion—and he regrets it.
This “therapy session” does not help Ken get over this issue with Mike. But he does get over it the next day.
Through his meditation, Ken realizes he was upset with Mike because he was jealous that Mike had managed to get his shit together and move on. For the Kings, this road trip is the last hoorah before the end of the line and a plummet into an unknown future; for Mike, it’s just a long weekend road trip, the outcome of which will have no bearing on his future.
Ken’s jealousy is his own issue, and hitting Mike doesn’t help him get over that. What does help him is acknowledging the jealousy and being able to tell Mike.
My Favorite Scene in the Movie
My favorite part of the whole movie is the evening the Kings hangout with Nancy and her friends (DO NOT call them cougars; Andie MacDowell’s answer to this interviewer is the stuff of legends. The scolding this guy receives is both brutal and obviously necessary given his stupid interjection halfway through). There is so much awesomeness that happens throughout this evening.
For now, I want to focus on my hero Ken.
I love this exchange. He shows this lovely woman that she is beautiful and desirable and that she deserves the adoration of her husband. He’s not doing this because he wants something from her; he’s not trying to seduce her. All Ken wants is for May to see herself the way he sees her, the way he knows she should be seen.
How beautiful is that?
This scene then slides gracefully into one of BDR’s awesome moments as well.
Obviously his intentions aren’t quite so…innocent. But they are completely sincere. Despite the age difference, there is no doubt that BDR is attracted to and interested in Nancy.
Also, remember BDR’s issues from earlier: He thinks he’ll never find The One. While rolling on Molly, coming up with an idea for his new dance routine (one that comes from the heart, not just the firefighter shtick that performs well with the ladies), BDR dreams up a wedding scenario. This guy wants to settle down and have a deep, meaningful relationship.
He’s not trying to seduce Nancy into a one-night stand. He’s truly grooving her vibe!
I have little doubt BDR and Nancy see each other again after the conference.
Locker Room Talk With the Kings
I think I have already explored several lessons we can learn from the Kings of Tampa, but one place in which the Kings rule supreme is in how they talk to and about each other and how they talk about women.
Because we see the Kings alone, conversing in private rather than just what they say in the presence of others, we know they are trustworthy narrators (or deranged sociopaths, but it’s not that kind of movie). So when one of the Kings says something to his boys, we can trust it to be the truth. And conversely what they do not say is also equally telling.
These guys have character and humility. Given their appearance (godlike Adonises, the lot of them), they could easily be macho, arrogant, narcissistic assholes. But they are not.
At no point will one of the Kings say something even close to how they can go around grabbing girls by the pussy. Because someone who can actually get women with charm and good looks doesn’t do that; that’s a move reserved for pathetic lowlifes (lowlives?) who have to rely on financial domination to get any action. And it’s certainly not something any self-respecting man should ever brag about. Shit, it’s a fucking embarrassment.
“How to say I’m a pathetic loser with no class without actually saying ‘I’m a pathetic loser with no class’ for $500 please, Alex.”
But that kind of thing gets excused as “locker room talk” between guys. That it’s OK to think such things and even say such things so long as you are only in the company of other men.
Not in the Kings’ locker room. Tarzan will toss you right out the door. Maybe without even opening the door.
How They Talk About Women
I’m going to use three exchanges here. The first comes from the clip of BDR dancing for the convenience store clerk. If you need to rewatch the clip, or just want to, please do so. I’ll wait.
Welcome back! The line I’m referring to is when BDR says, “That girl looks like she’s never fucking smiled in her entire fucking life.” He makes no comment about her looks or age. He’s nervous about this challenge because he thinks he’s not capable of putting a smile on her face.
The second happens after BDR comes into the kitchen following his evening with Nancy.
BDR isn’t bragging about a conquest. His friends don’t call her a slut or make any judgements about her being able to handle his tool. “That beautiful, nice lady was the glass slipper?” Ken even notes how Nancy and Richie had a crazy connection.
The third is this exchange between Ken and Andre, the singer at Rome’s club.
They can be healers because they ask women what they want. A beautiful notion…but only because of a sad reality. How many women never even get asked that by their man?
Every time the Kings talk about women it is with respect and care. They view themselves as healers and dream makers. There is no judgment about the women they meet. They don’t objectify women nor think ill of the women who want to see them perform. They see it as an honor to be able to provide this entertainment.
How They Talk to Each Other
I have already given enough examples of this in the clips above. So let me just do a quick jump through to show you what I mean.
Rewatch the BDR dancing in the convenience store. Yes, again. Pay particular note to how his friends pump him up before he does it and how excited they are when the girl smiles at the end. With brothers like that, a dude can take over the world!
Similarly, after Ken sings to May, look at how his fellow Kings cheer his talent.
Or in the kitchen after BDR reveals his successful night with Nancy. They are excited that he had this special evening.
When Mike and Ken are talking on the beach and Ken says his meditation was really clear, Mike kind of rolls his eyes about the meditation, but he doesn’t talk shit on Ken’s beliefs. He says he’s glad his friend found a way to put down his negativity.
Even when BDR is giving Tito slack for hesitating on starting the fro-yo truck, he’s not tearing down his friend’s dream. He’s trying to push Tito to take the leap and start the business because BDR believes in his friend’s ability to succeed.
These are some supportive bros who are not afraid to be vulnerable with each other, to give some good-natured teasing, or to say that they love each other.
A Few Last Points About Magic Mike XXL
Magic Mike XXL is amazingly progressive. Watching the scene with the Kings and Nancy’s friends, you can see the take the movie has on female sexuality. Women need, want, and deserve amazing sex and exceptional sexual connections with their partners. They deserve to have their fantasies realized.
And of course every scene with Rome in it. I mean, damn, the woman’s every line basically translates to: “Women, you are beautiful and you deserve to be treated like a queen. Don’t let any man take that away from you!”
Truth!
Where Magic Mike XXL Fails
It’s not a perfectly progressive movie.
Ken mentions that he and his wife Mercedes split when they tried to be monogamous. We don’t see this relationship at all in Magic Mike XXL, but it was in the first movie.
I feel like having this marriage fail is meant to show that a consensual nonmonogamous relationship isn’t valid. They weren’t really in love and connected, and so the marriage couldn’t sustain the monogamy test.
Also, there is a bit where Nancy notes that her ex-husband was homosexual—and perhaps he was—but the only evidence she provides to support the claim is that he really liked it when she put her finger…. We don’t know exactly where because Megan, her daughter, cuts her off. But we can guess where that was going.
This implies that if a man likes anal play, he must be gay. False!
Though, Tito immediately follows that with a “That’s not so terrible…” and a look to imply that maybe he enjoys a little backdoor fingering himself if Megan is up for giving it a try. He’s just not willing to make a case for it in front of a whole room full of strangers.
Why Are There No Relationships in Magic Mike XXL?
The official writers’ reason for Brooke not being in Magic Mike XXL was that there was no room for a girlfriend in the movie. OK, fine. I can accept that. It’s about a bro road trip. There’s a bunch of male energy in this movie, and it would be weird and awkward to have Brooke join the adventure.
But Brooke and Mike could have been together and engaged, and this movie would still have worked. Brooke could have been traveling for work but given her blessing for Mike to go on this trip with the boys. Sure, he’d be dancing for women, but they could have a strong relationship built on mutual trust and respect. No matter who he was dancing on or for, he wouldn’t stray.
That would have been an even better storyline than him wanting to go to get over her leaving him.
There is a bit of a flirty thing going on between Mike and Zoe throughout the movie, but they never hook up. I don’t even think they kiss. That relationship could have been platonic without much change in the dialogue. Which would have been great! Not every movie needs a love interest. And not every male-female interaction needs to be about love or sex. This storyline could have progressed the same way without Mike being single.
The same could have been done with Ken and Mercedes. There was no need for every guy to be single as if it wasn’t possible for them to be in a strong relationship and be dancers.
Did Channing Tatum and the Cast of Magic Mike XXL Know They Were Creating Such a Progressive, Uplifting Movie?
Not that intention is required for a movie, book, or story to be uplifting and worthy of taking lessons from, but yes, I think they did know that.
I’ve watched several interviews with the cast, and it sounds like they understood and focused on both the elements of male brotherhood and female empowerment. Though, it was also interesting hearing Sam Bomer and Channing Tatum talk about being self-conscious about their bodies. Certainly makes me feel better about my issues. Or at least that me having these issues isn’t so insane.
Though, it points to the idea that no matter how I might progress, I’ll never be satisfied with how I look. Which makes sense in a way.
I often joke to coworkers that if I ever look like [insert hunky actor name here, though I usually say Ryan Reynolds], they need to be prepared for me to walk around the office shirtless. (None of them ever said that would be a problem. Most seemed to support that plan.)
But even if I did manage to look like one of the Kings of Tampa, I wouldn’t be able to see that for myself (damn you, body dysmorphia!) and therefore would never feel comfortable walking around shirtless.
Find a Group That Cares About You and Uplifts You Like the Kings of Tampa in Magic Mike XXL
Whether you are male or female, find your tribe. And then make sure you are showing up for your tribe. Don’t be like Mike in Magic Mike and walk out on your boys just because one member is being toxic. Mike was the one the Kings needed; Dallas was dragging them all down. By leaving, Mike abandoned his friends to the wolves. At least he realized his mistake (thanks to Tarzan’s trickery. That man is wise!).
And if you do pull a Mike and walk out, be like Mike in Magic Mike XXL. Show up and do what you have to to reestablish your connection with your friends. It can be painful at times but worth it.
I’m fortunate to have a great group of friends. Maybe I don’t always “show up” as much as I should; I’m very good at retreating into myself and handling things on my own. I don’t like being a burden on others. I don’t even like being taken care of when I’m sick.
But I believe my friends know that when they need me, I’m there for them.
If you haven’t watched Magic Mike XXL, I hope this post inspires you to do so. If you have, then I hope you give it another watch with an eye for the points I’ve made here. There are many more examples of positive masculinity and female empowerment in this movie.