Apologies and a Review

Has it really been over a year? I have absolutely been remiss and I apologize. A lot of things have happened since I last posted. We moved into the house. We've had our first year under our belt. And we're expecting our first child this month. It has really been that long. Crazy.

Casper and I put the podcast on semi-permanent hiatus. We will be retooling the site and establishing a new identity. While we are still in love with the Level Up concept, we feel it is ready for a new fresh take. Thus we have come up with Secondhand Gents. In addition to the stuff we've done in the past, we have also starting "leveling up" our wardrobe with budget buys and thrift store finds. Check out our tumblr at secondhandgents.tumblr.com.

So on to the review. I saw Magic Mike today. Odd choice for a movie I know seeing as it seems geared towards a female audience (it's a movie about male strippers) and I really don't like Channing Tatum all that much. But I do love Steven Soderbergh. If he could get me to love Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven, maybe he could do the same in Magic Mike.

The movie is basically the male version of Showgirls, only with a bit less cattiness and a lot less camp. It's the old formula of "young ingenue is taken under the wing of the big star". Not the most original of concepts but I haven't really seen it explored with men. I've seen it plenty of times with women, like in All About Eve to the aforementioned Showgirls.

What worked:

1. Cinematography - I love Soderbergh's errr...Peter Andrews' camera work. It's quirky. Off-beat. Definitely not slick. Odd angles and a lot of natural light. I love it.
2. Choreography - Come on. It's a movie about male dancers. The dancing better be up to snuff and for the most part, it is. And Tatum definitely shows off his moves, learned from his own years of being a stripper. 
3. Matthew McConaughey - steals every scene he's in. He has that lethal combination of ignorance and arrogance with a good helping of ambition. He is the funniest part of the movie, an entrepreneur living in his own delusion.

What didn't work:

1. Alex Pettyfer - was a bit too bland in my opinion. Yes, he's supposed to be the aimless guy who gets in over his head but he seems pretty one note through the whole movie. He was also hindered by the script in that he didn't really have much character development. I would have liked to see him go through an arc similar to Dirk Diggler's in Boogie Nights.
2. The script - the movie meandered quite a bit too much for my liking. I loved that it never really got into melodrama. But it also didn't really get into the characters. For the most part, they were all superficial ciphers. 
3. The tone - the movie starts off very comedic but it get's pretty heavy about halfway through. I actually like the drama in the movie but I do feel that it was uneven. It's funny. The part of the movie that makes it so much better than Showgirls in my opinion (the fact that it's not campy) may also be it's biggest downfall. It's not funny enough to be a comedy and it's not serious enough to be a drama. It tries to be both without really being successful at either.

Overall, I liked the movie. Sure, it wasn't the greatest movie ever made. I think it was a good beginning for a movie. I think it could probably have been 30 minutes to an hour longer and you could really get into the nitty gritty of the characters. Develop some better conflict. Have a better sense of resolution. But let's be honest. The majority of people who are going to see Magic Mike aren't interested in character development. They're looking for scantly clad men gyrating their hips. And this movie has it in spades.