Magic Mike

LITTLE ROCK — There are films that sneak up and surprise you with their depth and carefully crafted plot points. Then there are films that cause certain (female) moviegoers to yell upon entering the theater, “I got my dollar bills ready!”

But before you drop everything and grab a bunch of your BFFs to check out this Channing Tatum male stripper spectacle, you might consider familiarizing yourself with the filmic works of director Steven Soderbergh first.

For one thing, Mr. Soderbergh is first and foremost what the French call an auteur, not some hack summer blockbuster bloviator looking to cash a quick check with seven zeroes on it. For another, he doesn’t do much in the way of crazy, good-time crowd pleasin’ - excepting, I suppose, the Ocean’s series.

Instead, he likes making smaller, more allusive and experimental films that dig into the craft of filmmaking itself. As a storyteller, he’s also a bit of an impressionist, featuring short, tightly edited scenes that avoid belaboring plot points.

That said, ladies, there’s really no need to worry here: We’re not through 30 seconds of screen time before the aforementioned Tatum is strolling through his sun-splashed Florida apartment bare-cheeked. In fact, the most surprising element of this film is the way in which it gets to play to both the stripper-friendly crowd and those hoping for something with a bit more, er, meat on its bones. Soderbergh has found a sweet spot somewhere between Saturday Night Fever and Boogie Nights.

The story, reportedly based(very) loosely on Tatum’s own experiences as a Florida stripping sensation early in his showbiz career, concerns a charismatic, seemingly together fellow named Mike (Tatum), who early in the film takes another young buck under his considerably well developed wing and teaches him the ropes of the stripping game.

The kid, Adam (Alex Pettyfer), is decent but unfocused, completely unsure of what he wants to do. He has come to Tampa to live with his sister, Brooke (Cody Horn), a medical assistant who wants nothing to do with Adam’s new found lifestyle.

Naturally, with Adam’s inexperience, the money and attention quickly go to his head, leading him to make some questionable decisions that imperil his and Mike’s situation, even as the strip club’s owner, Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), is promising to take his whole stable of hunks down south to a new club he’s opening in Miami, where the big money is.

Tatum’s Mike is a slick operator. Shimmying onstage in a long trench coat (or rip away military fatigues) or making the party scene on a giant yacht, he doesn’t so much walk as float, so certain of his charm and his hypnotizing power over people, he never has to question his own personal authority. He’s Tony Manero, dancing on a different kind of stage.

But, as he’s at some pains to demonstrate, there’s more to him than a lantern jaw and rippling abs. He’s a businessman at heart, a self-described “entrepreneur” who claims to long for a more stable and less chaotic job designing and building his own custom furniture.

So tightly bound is he to the life of the exterior, it is really only in his strained relationship with Brooke, a woman who quickly sees through his self-denial and lies, that we get any sense of whom Mike actually yearns to be. And that might be the film’s single most delicately rendered element: As good as he is at what he does, and as much as he soaks up the female attention like a sponge, we never quite lose the idea that Mike wants something almost entirely different from what he’s getting. Like a female heroine from a Jane Austen novel, he’s so in denial about his actual needs, he almost has himself convinced of the exact opposite.

In the end, not terribly much actually happens.

There might be a bunch of cowboy hats, American flag thongs, and more pelvic thrusts in the script than there are prepositions, but at its heart, it’s simply about a decent enough guy who finally falls for the right girl.

Magic Mike 89 Cast: Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Joe Manganiello Director: Steven Soderbergh Rating: R, for pervasive sexual content, brief graphic nudity, language and some drug use Running time: 110 minutes