Magic Mike, Pizza & Deceit

Imagine you are in the mood for a cheese pizza with a light pineapple topping.

You squeeze a  grocery store stop into your busy day just to grab said pizza. You invite your friends over to share it, preheat the oven, rub your hands together with glee as you rip open the box. And then you stare at the pizza in dismay.

Confused, you flip the box over and check the picture again. Yep. Plain old cheese pizza with a few pineapples stare back innocently from the cardboard. You blink. Shove the pizza back in the box and then pull it out again. Blink. Then you get mad. You feel betrayed. Lied to. Because there…in the midst of frozen cheese and a few shriveled up wanna be pieces of pineapple are…anchovies! And mushrooms! And some kind of green slimy thing that nauseates you.

You have to apologize to your friends, mumble something about someone else picking out the pizza next time and go to bed hungry and angry at the lie on the front of the pizza box.

This was my Magic Mike experience and I left the movie depressed and in need of a shower. I call it bait and switch. Anyone who’s seen the previews expects a fun, shallow movie with a splash of romance that you can unwind and giggle with your girlfriends about. In reality, it was about the sleazy, seedy lifestyle of male strippers, complete with drug abuse, drug dealing, skanky sex…oh, and  a pot-belly pig licking up vomit.

I know. Nauseating.

As a writer, I know a book’s cover tells the reader what to expect from the book. You know if the story inside is a mystery, sci-fi, literary, romance or erotica by how it’s packaged and marketed. This movie was like picking up a book with a romance cover and falling into gritty, urban street fiction. I won’t even mention the romance part except to say it didn’t work. At all.

Now, I’m sure Mr. Soderbergh didn’t intend to deceive us. He probably considers himself an artist and didn’t want to just make a movie about  Channing Tatum dancing  for an hour and a half.  But, honestly, I would have preferred this because for me, the ten minutes of Tatum’s moves were the only redeeming factor in this movie.

If you’ve already seen this movie, what did you think? Were you disappointed? Disgusted? Am I being too sensitive? Or did I just make you hungry for pizza? Inquiry minds wanna know!