Magic Mike is a good film, worth seeing. But it’s nothing I would ever need to see again. It captures the world of male strippers in an interesting and entertaining way. The story, while certainly not at all deep, holds your attention and is paced quite well. Performances are good across the board. But it’s light on dialog and character development, and in certain areas it’s a little unbelievable.

One thing Steven Soderbergh is good at is capturing gritty little spontaneous-feeling scenes. Like the scene where “the kid” meets the other strippers for the first time back stage, or the sandbar party, or the police stripper scene in the sorority house – these scenes have an unusual combination of excitement and understatement that’s fun to watch. But Soderbergh has a definite downside too. His approach to movies always feels a more than little cold and clinical to me; he never cultivates warmth, even when it’s right there in front of him. In addition, although he features music montages quite a bit in his films, he really does not know how to make good use of them; they tend to be diffuse and boring, semi-abstract collages of images set to self-consciously atmospheric music. I think he has always had these problems, all the way back to Sex, Lies and Videotape, the few exceptions being films that were basically vehicles for huge, warm, charismatic stars (Ocean’s 11, Erin Brockovich.)

What kind of saves this film a little bit is Cody Horn, who plays the sister of “the kid,” and the object of Channing Tatum affections. She has a great look and voice for the role, and she’s pretty warm as well.  She interjects a bit of old-school indie heroine into the film, especially since she looks so much like a real person on screen. It’s just a shame that they didn’t write more dialog for her.

Channing Tatum is an interesting actor. I like watching his dancing (he was great in Step Up, too) and it’s fun to admire his physique as well. And he does have a certain energized charm about him, especially in his first few scenes. But I find that about half-way through his movies, I’m kind of done with him, sick of him. Magic Mike is no exception.

It’s definitely worth seeing, but if you’re anything like me it will probably leave you a little cold.