If you have not yet seen the cover of the May 25 issue of “Entertainment Weekly,” get out of your chair right now and scamper off to your local newsstand and buy a copy.
It’s a big heavenly picture of Channing Tatum, dreamboat that he is, unbuttoning his shirt and looking right at you, reader, with the devil’s eyes and a funny little I'm-gonna-get-you smile. (I give you a little sample of it above. To paraphrase Garth in “Wayne’s World": when I look at it, I feel funny, like when I climb the rope in gym class.)
But wait! There’s more! The cover folds out into a full tableau of the four leads of Channing’s new movie, “Magic Mike,” which is all about male strippers: Channing himself, the immense Joe Manganiello, a very nice-looking newcomer named Matt Bomer, and a still-good-looking (if vacant) Matthew McConaughey.
That cover is a little piece of heaven on earth.
And may Heaven bless my friend Tab, who gave me his copy of the magazine and graciously said I could keep it. As I said to him yesterday morning: “Today you have made an old man very happy.”
This movie has been a long time incubating, and there has been much buzz about it. Channing Tatum, who also came up with the idea for the movie, was himself a male exotic dancer, and is refreshingly unapologetic about it (go see his intro dance / monologue from his appearance on SNL a few months ago). There is something really very likeable about him. (Translation: I would cheerfully have his baby, or as many babies as he wants to have.) There was a joke on a recent episode of “30 Rock” about “Channing Tatum’s meteoric rise to fame,” and I get it: where did this guy come from? And why did we not know about him sooner? (I loved watching him goofing around in “21 Jump Street”; he’s like a big kid, and I think it comes naturally to him, and it’s very much part of his charm.)
I don’t mean to slight the other members of the cast of “Magic Mike.” Manganiello is really wonderful, and he really covers a lot of terrain, and he looks like he would be fun to play cribbage with, if you understand me. Bomer is a nice discovery for me, as I had no idea he existed up until now. McConaughey is – well, he’s not my cup of tea. He fairly radiates dull and shallow; he’s nicely built, but he has a dessicated air, like a piece of salt codfish. But, with a bag over his head, he might serve to while away a dull afternoon.
If I sound shallow myself, well, surprise, I am shallow. Remember the Gelman-Waxner Rule: the enjoyment you take away from a movie is in direct proportion to the attractiveness of its leading actors / actresses.
“Magic Mike” premieres June 29.
Do you think it’s too soon for me to get in line for tickets?
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