Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: R Length: 110 minutes
Age Appropriate for: 17+. It’s a movie about male strippers, so lots of male butts, as well as female butts and toplessness; implied sex scenes (including the morning-after of a threesome); and the use of a pump device before a male dancer goes onstage (that shot, however, is blurry and unfocused). Also cursing, drug use, and drinking, although the latter two aren’t glamorized. Certainly not for Channing Tatum’s teen fans!
Steven Soderbergh has been on a roll recently with ‘Contagion,’ ‘Haywire,’ and now ‘Magic Mike,’ an impressively nonjudgmental look at the world of male stripping. In the lead role of a film inspired by his own life, Channing Tatum is superb—and ‘Magic Mike’ is one of the best films of this summer.
By Roxana Hadadi
We’ve all seen the commercials; we all know what “Magic Mike” is offering us. Abs! Butts! Men gyrating in choreographed dance sequences onstage for our viewing pleasure! But what makes director Steven Soderbergh’s latest so undeniably wonderful is its own genuineness, a spin on the yearning of the American Dream that is about more than just Village People-inspired nudity. There is a living, breathing sense of realism to “Magic Mike” that cuts through all the naked male bodies, and while they’re certainly what will draw in some viewers, the humanism is what you won’t forget.
