Magic Mike XXL Is Sex and the City 2 With Waxed Pecs

Photo: Everett Collection There often comes a moment in every winning entertainment brand when it becomes woefully over concerned with its own original points of delight and starts driving home a theme too hard–at the expense of characters and story.Seinfeld, remarkably, managed to put off this moment until its very last episode, a thunking meta-riff on just how irredeemably selfish and unlikable the characters were. Sex and the City started veering this way shortly after 9/11, when the glamor of Blahniks, Louboutins and the sparkly city itself–which once were mere charming backdrops to cunning parables about love, sex and friendship–became the true stars of the show. Photo: Everett Collection As for the relatively new Magic Mike franchise, alas, it’s hit that point on the early side with Magic Mike XXL, which opens today. If you happened to see the original 2012 hit, in which the hopelessly sweet and affable beefcake Channing Tatum played a successful male stripper in Tampa, Florida, who yearns for more from his life, you may remember how Steven Soderbergh managed to direct that flick with a combination of the muted realism he used in Sex, Lies and Videotape and Traffic and the populist streak of everyday working-class American hustle he brought to Erin Brockovich.