thoughts on Magic Mike XXL

"How did a sequel become both simpler and smarter than the film that came before it?" asks BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen in this excellent article.  It's a good question, and the description-- "both simpler and smarter than the film that came before it"-- is a pretty good characterization of the film.  Yesterday, a day after I saw Magic Mike XXL, I was asked how it was.  "It was a lot different than the first one," I responded. 

"Was it as good as the first one?" the friend asked.

"No?" I responded cautiously, a question in my voice.  I felt like I was being asked to compare apples and oranges, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what was so different about this film.  It featured most of the same cast as Magic Mike (Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer are out; Jada Pinkett Smith and Donald Glover are in).  It's still about male strippers.  It still has heart; like the first film, it treats the strippers, as well as the women who visit male strip clubs, as Real Human People with Feelings, and manages to acknowledge the humor inherent in male stripping without making fun of or really even passing judgment on the profession, those who work in it, or those who consume it.  If the first film was an insider's look at the industry told through a man who had been in the business so long he couldn't see outside of it (McConaughey); a man trying to get out but unsure how (Channing Tatum); and a man just starting out (Pettyfer), the second film is a road trip movie in which the strippers try to reimagine what they do outside of the confines of the characters they've always played onstage and the routines they've always done (Richie (Joe Mangianello) typically does a fireman routine; he's actually afraid of fire).  This lays the groundwork for a less serious film the second time around...but it's fun, and each group of women the men meet along the road help them see why it's perhaps best to personalize their routines based on what works for them and for the women.

In the end, I think it works as a sequel because it's able to take the characters and heart of the first film and put it in a second, very different, film, rather than simply retreading what was done in the first.  I liked it.