Male strippers are not often portrait in movies, so the idea of showing how their world is (and if it’s different from female strippers) was quite appealing and probably was the reason of the success of Magic Mike, in 2012. That, of course, and the fact that Channing Tatum was playing a stripper.

Three years later we get a sequel, but apparently people are not that curious anymore. Magic Mike XXL is not doing that well at the box office, even though it had a good first week, but it’s hard to compete with summer blockbusters, specially when everybody is interested again in dinosaurs and Marvel releases one super-hero film after the other. Nonetheless, Magic Mike XXL is as good and entertaining as the first one.

The movie starts with Mike (Channing Tatum) working on his own, since he decided to quit dancing at the end of the first movie. He’s struggling to get clients and barely has money to pay his employee. So, when his former strippers co-workers call him to go with them to an annual stripper convention, he decides to get back one last time. Matthew McConaughey doesn’t reprise his role as Dallas, but he’s replaced by Jada Smith, who plays Rome, an owner of a house of male strippers and someone important in Mike’s past. I liked her in this role and was gladly surprised to see her performance.

Almost the entire movie is focused on their road trip from Florida to South Carolina, with a few stops on the way. We see them fighting, going out with women and using a lot of drugs. But this sequel has more funny moments than its predecessor. One of the funniest scenes is when Richie (Joe Manganiello) starts stripping in a convenience store to “I want it that way”, by the Backstreet Boys. The entire theater reacted really well to that scene.

So it’s a movie that accomplishes its main purpose: entertain the audience for two hours, with no second intentions.

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