On the surface, the movies are obviously different, but there are more similarities than you would think. Both highlight the rise and fall of various stage performers. Both depict the dangers of temptation and drug use. Both involve penis pumps. (Oh wait, that might have just been Magic Mike.) But let's get started.
Magic Mike
Mike (Channing Tatum) has big hopes and his dream is to run his own furniture-building business, making homegoods from unusual items. Without any credit and not much money, he's forced to take on a few jobs to make that dream happen: car detailing, roofing, and of course, his night job of being a male stripper.
One day at the construction site, Mike meets Adam, a lost young guy with no real plans for life. He showed up for work at the roofing company after answering a Craigslist ad and quits the first day after the foreman accuses him of stealing cans of soda. Later that night, Adam escapes an excruciating dinner with his sister Brooke (who is supporting him) and her annoying boyfriend and bumps into Mike. Mike gets him into a club, where they chat up some girls and...convince them to go to the male strip show next door. Surprise, Adam! Your new bud is a Chippendales man!
Adam watches while Mike and the rest of the performers put on a show, and any discomfort he has at watching men take their clothes off is kind of hidden by the fact that they get to rub themselves all over the ladies in the audience. When one of the performers - a grizzled veteran named Tarzan (played hilariously by former WWE superstar Kevin Nash) - passes out before his act, the manager/host (Matthew McConaughey) convinces Adam to take the stage. What he does isn't pretty (it looks more like a guy taking his clothes off to be examined by a doctor) but his babyface and flirtatious personality elicits a response from the crowd and he's quickly hired.
From there, we see Adam's rise, with the help of the other strippers, especially Mike. He becomes more comfortable on the stage, really putting on a show, while reveling in the life off it - the booze, the girls, the parties. While Mike has never turned down a girl (he has an on-again, off-again affair with a kinky psychology student played by Olivia Munn), he's less into the crazy party atmosphere than the other guys. His maturity draws him more to Brooke, Adam's no-nonsense sister. Both are dismayed as Adam falls further and further down the wrong path, hooking up with the wrong girls, experimenting with drugs and then starting to sell them.
I'll stop there, so as not to ruin the end of the movie for anyone. I was kind of surprised at myself for wanting to see this movie, but I figured that A) I'm a straight woman and B) I do find Channing Tatum extremely good-looking. I'm allowed movie candy once in awhile. They can't ALL be Oscar nominees, alright?!
Anyway, equally surprising was how much I enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, the visuals. And the surprise addition of Kevin Nash was delightful. But I actually liked the story, it wasn't completely predictable and Tatum, McConaughey and Cody Horn (Brooke) were all pretty good. It's not going to make AFI's next Top 100 Movies Ever list but it was an entertaining couple of hours.
Dreamgirls
It's the 1960s and Effie, Deena and Lorell, three African-American girls from Detroit, have been singing as a group since they were little kids. A chance meeting with a car salesman/wannabe music executive named Curtis (Jamie Foxx) at a local talent competition quickly leads to their first semi-break - as backup singers for a Little Richard-esque showman named James "Thunder" Early. Effie (Jennifer Hudson), always the lead of their threesome, is put off by the idea of being a backup singer, but she trusts Curtis and even ends up having an affair with him.
Thanks to Curtis' management and the writing ability of Effie's brother CC, the girls record a hit themselves but quickly learn the cutthroat nature of the 1960s music scene - the payola scandal and innate racism that has white artists stealing black artists' songs and passing them off as their own. Curtis decides to go into the payola business himself and gets a big break for the girls, but not before mixing up the group: Deena (Beyonce), not Effie, is going to be the lead, despite the fact that everyone, including Deena, knows Effie has the real pipes. Why? Effie's a little chunky while Deena is a pretty face.
Things get worse for Effie there, as she watches Curtis get closer and closer to his new lead. He soon cuts ties with Effie personally and professionally, replacing her with another girl, and Deena Jones and the Dreams soon take off, topping the charts throughout the '60s and into the disco era of the '70s.
Things aren't perfect, however. Jimmy Early - who is also on Curtis' record label and whose sound has been altered into more of a smooth soul singer rather than his energetic rock stylings earlier - is frustrated that he can't perform the types of songs he wants to and turns to drugs. Deena - now married to Curtis - is resentful of his grip on her career, forcing her to star in a movie she doesn't like. And poor Effie is destitute, raising a young daughter by herself (surprise, Curtis!)
Eventually, for various reasons, things start to fall apart for Curtis and Effie's friends learn what's happened to her over the past decade.
Full Disclosure: I hate musicals. It's why I kept pushing off seeing Les Miserables until the Oscars came and went and now probably won't (unless it's the second feature of one of my weekly marathons, viewed after Bring it On or something). The reason I hate them is because I can't find them believable. It's easy to watch a movie, even if you know the movie is completely fake, because the people are normal people that are acting as though it's real. But I can't suspend my disbelief when the people start singing about their feelings in the middle of a conversation. It's just...it's not right.
I thought Dreamgirls would be better than most musicals for me because most of the songs would be performances, which are realistic uses for songs in a movie. I was right. There were a few middle-of-the-conversation songs and they were as corny as ever (like the weird duet with CC and Effie. CC IS NOT A SINGER!) but they were few and far between. Plus, the ability of Jennifer Hudson was enough to make me forget. God, she's really good. Really, everyone was. I can see why she won Best Supporting Actress and why Murphy was nominated for Supporting Actor, and I thought Foxx and Beyonce were great, as well. I especially respected Beyonce playing a role whose entire definition is that she's not as good a singer as someone else; as a professional singer herself, that must have been hard. It also made me wonder if Kelly Rowland was originally supposed to be the lead singer of Destiny's Child. MIND OFFICIALLY BLOWN.
Anyway, you don't need me to tell you that an Oscar-winning movie was good, but I'm still going to tell you that. You might need me to tell you that a movie about male strippers was also pretty decent, and I'll do that for you, as well.
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