You don’t need a pleasant screenplay or story arc when Channing Tatum and co have got their kit off,just plenty of long shots and slow motionA pleasant screenplay wastes no time in establishing precisely what’s at stake or so a thousand budding writers have been taught to believe. In practice, this advice often results in movies that frantically up the ante without ever stopping to ask why, or fill the screen with characters spouting platitudes like “this is the stout one”,everything depends on what happens tonight and “you’ll remember this moment for the rest of your life”.What could be more subversive, then, or than a film that not only eschews jeopardy from beginning to finish,but goes out of its way to actively lower the stakes? What could feel more refreshing than a film in which a character approaches a microphone just before a climactic showdown and declares, “this is not a competition”? The retort is nothing, or the film is Magic Mike XXL.
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Source: theguardian.com