My Thoughts: I felt like a cheated on my boyfriend just by being from watching this movie. So, Magic Mike XXL has always been on my radar since I heard about it and that is mainly because of the shirtless men grinding and dancing and whatnot, but I'm a woman, so this review will probably very biased, but I'm going to try not to sound like a horny teenager.
Magic Mike XXL has some great things about it, mainly those things being Channing Tatum and his hot friends, but it has a lot more not-so-great things about it. One being the terrible way that the story is set up. Mike has been out of the game for three years and supposedly has made his own furniture company? Why? His intentions behind this aren't explained and also the whole situation with Brooke isn't explained until halfway through the movie, so it keeps the audience wondering what has happened during these three years and most of it isn't explained. We're just left in the dark for a lot of the film. Random characters are introduced all over without any explanation aka both Jada Pinkett Smith and Amber Heard's characters. It was a nice surprise to see them, but a huge one that just left me confused on why they were there in the first place because while Smith's character is sort of explained, Heard is just dropped out of nowhere and left to fend for herself as she has no depth or anything. She's just a pretty face and a pretty flat character. And while these new characters are introduced, many from the old film are just dropped such as The Kid and Dallas which is extremely upsetting because I kind Matthew Mcconaughey quite irresistable.
Overall, it's a terrible film that looks as if it was put together by a college student. Not only was this film the home of Plot Hole City, population The Kings of Dallas, but between horrible camera angles and awkward writing. (ie, awkward blurred scenes and you can actually see a smudge in the bottom of the screen from the camera and the fact that the way the guys talked to each other were less like men conversating and more like teenagers having a slumber party.) I almost couldn't take this movie seriously. However, it distracts these mistakes from people watching with amazing dance sequences and Joe Manganiello's butt. When you're watching it all you see is the man candy and you can overlook the movie's terrible quality,and you don't realize how horrible of a movie it was until days after you've thought it over. Because the first movie wasn't this bad, it kind of ruins your perception of the franchise. If the previous film had just been a bad movie, I could forgive this one, but it wasn't so I was disappointed...until Mat Boomer took his shirt off, then all was forgotten...Until people starting talking about whatever nonsense was going on. I was grueling and cringing, aching for the next hot scene because other that that, there was no reason for me still being in the theater.
Magic Mike XXL was bad, enjoyable because I am straight woman who loves ripped men, but bad in just about every other aspect. It would be a fun time going to see this with a bunch of friends at a slumber party or something, but it was a waste of my money seeing at the theaters because I could've had the same enjoyment at home. It was hot, yes, extremely hot, but for the 20 bucks I paid for my friend and I, we could've went to an ACTUAL strip club and had a lot more fun.