'Magic Mike XXL' Trailer is a Giant Dick Joke

Sexy is totally coming back to cinema, This year we've had Fifty Shades of Grey's delicate foray into bondage and Focus actually had a love story with real life bare bodies intimately wrapping around each other. Magic Mike XXL now wants do its part steaming up the big screen with a bevy of prancing and gyrating beefcakes.



The trailer seems to have been composed after some marketing intern was challenged to cram as many sexual innuendos as possible and see if they can get away with showcasing a 2 minute dick joke. Not that anyone who actually willingly clicked on a trailer about aging male strippers getting ready for a big strip competition should be floored by copious references to male private parts. There is no doubt that legendary filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, and Sidney Lumet deep down always dreamed pulling off a masterful scene of a guy using a shaken up can of pop to simulate ejaculations that this trailer unleashes.

Amongst those washboard abs and miraculous pecs, this trailer also was really helpful in giving me several reminders. A Donald Glover appearance reminded me that I really need to catch up on Community and that he is a heck of an underrated comedian (hopefully, he gets to flex his muscles and his comic chops). I was also reminded that Andie MacDowell was seemingly in every single movie in the early 1990s and I waited too long to compose my "Actors Trapped in the Forbidden Zone" article.

Most importantly, I'm reminded that I still need to see the original. I say need because I don't feel like a proper modern film writer without being able to say that I've seen Steven Soderbergh's entire film canon (well, I can say that now, but not honestly). The original was supposed to be a really smart and funny movie, and was the breakout role that proved Channing Tatum is more than just a dancing piece of gorgeous meat by playing. . . well, that.

Without seeing the original, I can't tell if this picture is trying to go all meta and self-aware by throwing the characters into one of the most cliché of sequels. Or if it is just a case of "damn, we made a lot of money on the first but we don't have a script, let just adapt this Pitch Perfect 2 screenplay by substituting all the singing with sexy dancing and barely disguised references to hard penises."  In the era where forty five sequels are mapped out before the original is filmed, there is something comforting about a studio daring to do a thrown together sequel to an unexpected hit that is a blatant cash grab. Of course, I may just be missing all the subtext and brilliance that is contained in the 433 dick jokes crammed in this trailer