GROUCHY MALE REVIEW OF MAGIC MIKE XXL

2015 rating: *

Thank kitschy heaven for Joe Manganiello: The giant actor (who could have been the next Tony "Meat" Ganios if PORKY'S was remade), playing Big Dick Richie, is the best thing going for this limp MAGIC MIKE sequel, in which the only thing XXL is our airhead comic relief's stage name...

And so now, instead of a Steven Soderbergh art film only partially centering on the kind of male revue that secretaries file in droves to catch on the big screen, especially with former stripper turned cinema dancer turned A-list Hollywood leading man Channing Tatum at the helm, we now have a bonafide road trip movie that's even more ponderous and, trying desperately to be artistic with askew insert shots, overlong conversations with a new disassociated love interest and added-on characters who act as if they've been around all along... like Mike's former boss Jada Pinkett Smith as a madame MC... the core fans wanting what men got with SHOWGIRLS are once again subjected (whether they know it or not) to Tatum's pretentious agenda to make his former trade, in which he's much too talented and professional to seem realistic, more ponderously deep than gloriously banal.