Magic Mike and Those Other Boys in the Band

If you’re looking for two films with contrasting outlooks on male sexuality, try watching Magic Mike back to back with the new Netflix version of Mart Crowley’s classic 1968 stage play, The Boys in the Band. Magic Mike, set in modern-day Tampa, features a lurid strip club in which hard-bodied young males rhythmically shed their clothes, to the delight of scores of screaming young women. It’s like a particularly lurid reunion of the Village People: you’ve never seen so many fantasy cops, construction workers, GI’s, and trenchcoat-clad businessmen stripping down to their skivvies (and beyond) to the thumping beat of rock music. Matthew McConaughey presides over this stud farm, and seems to be enjoying every moment he gets to strut his stuff as the motor-mouth club impresario. But at the center of the flimsy story stands Channing Tatum, who apparently once lived this life for real, and has the dance moves (as well as the body) to prove it. He’d really rather be making custom furniture (huh?), but he willingly takes on the obligation of initiating a teen-aged newcomer into this sketchy but somehow glamorous world.

 Does he succeed? Do we really care? This film may be easy on the eyes, but it’s hard to feel much connection with its characters and their sometimes pathetic hustles in the name of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

 One of the guys in Magic Mike’s chorus line of strippers is hunky Matt Bomer, perhaps best known for looking good in a suit in TV’s White Collar series. I was deeply amused to see Bomer turning up as Donald in The Boys in the Band, a screen adaptation of the acclaimed 2018 Broadway revival starring Jim Parsons (The Big Bang’s nerdy Sheldon, of course) in the central role of Michael. The Boys in the Band owes something to Broadway hits like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which assorted characters gather for a social event that turns out to be a kind of brutal exorcism. But what made this play stand out in 1968 was the fact that all (or mostly all) of its characters are gay men, presented frankly and affectionately, in an era well before AIDS was to decimate their ranks. One of the partygoers, the flamboyant Emory (Robin de Jesús) seems to conform to a common stereotype (the gay “queen”), but his portrayal – like all the others – is more complex than it first appears. There’s pain here, and humor, and anger, and real grappling to accept the hand that each man has been dealt.

 The stakes are ramped up as Michael semi-maliciously introduces a “Get the Guests” party game designed to bring out each player’s deepest hopes and fears. The fact that all the men in this production (also including Zachary Quinto of the Star Trek prequel, Andrew Rannells of The Book of Mormon, and others) are “out” in their own lives doubtless inspires their understanding of the roles they play.

 When a Broadway hit is transferred to the screen, it often comes off as stiff and stagey. Director Joe Mantello, one of Broadway’s leading lights since he staged Angels in America in 1993, has only limited film experience. Still, he’s done a masterful job of opening up a play that originally featured a simple living-room set. At the onset, we see the characters heading to Michael’s New York digs from their various homes; later we watch them scattering. Michael’s cushy terrace apartment also allows for some outdoor scenes, and a rain shower punctuates some of the drama. It’s talky, yes, but this talk is well worth hearing.

 

Solving the Mystery of Sherlock Holmes’ Little Sister

Until recently, all I knew of Millie Bobby Brown was her name. It’s an odd name, putting me in mind of someone living in a charming old farmhouse a few centuries back. Maybe, given her critical and popular success as a psychokinetic young girl on the series Stranger Things, it would be apt to think of that farmhouse as haunted.

 Millie Bobby Brown is sixteen years old. But unlike most sixteen-year-olds, she has just produced as well as starred in a new movie I’ve found genuinely enchanting. It’s Enola Holmes, based on a recent series of young-adult mysteries by Nancy Springer, who invented as her leading character a clever young sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, one who has her own gift for sleuthing her way through Victorian England. Frankly, I’d never heard of the series, but it clearly follows in the footsteps of the young-woman detective sagas of my youth. (There was the unstoppable Nancy Drew, of course, but my special favorite was a red-headed journalist named Beverly Gray who traveled the world solving mysteries while also landing scoops for her newspaper. No, I wasn’t named after her; my mother was terribly surprised to come upon a book titled Beverly Gray’s Romance while I was still in diapers. But I digress.)

 Enola Holmes, it seems, has been creatively raised in the English countryside by a strong but mysterious mother (Helena Bonham-Carter, no less) who likes to remind her that her first name, when read backward, spells “Alone” This seems pertinent when that mother suddenly disappears, leaving her clever, headstrong child to fend for herself. When her celebrated older brothers turn up to figure out how to solve the problem of Enola, they aren’t much help. The stuffy Mycroft’s goal is to send her off to a posh but sinister school for young ladies; Sherlock (played by the hunky Henry Cavill without any of the familiar Holmesian paraphernalia) seems more sympathetic to her situation, but is unwilling to give her the autonomy she craves.

 Eventually, she manages to get herself to London, meanwhile befriending a youthful aristocrat with problems of his own. As she searches for her lost mother and tries to keep the young Viscount Tewkesbury out of harm’s way, she is able to put to use various aspects of her singular education, including a familiarity with codebreaking, chess, and jiujitsu. This being a story pointed toward today’s young women, there’s no surprise that it contains a strong feminist point of view. I must say I rather enjoyed seeing Tewkesbury (who’s amiable and good-looking but not overly brave) repeatedly cower while Enola takes care of business.

 This film would not have succeeded so well without first-rate production values. There’s a lively score by David Pemberton and some charming visuals (paper cut-outs and such) used to bridge scenes and quickly provide information. But Enola Holmes is truly in the hands of Brown, with whom it’s easy indeed to fall in love. The script calls for her to speak, on many occasions, directly to the viewer, and her combination of girlish gusto and Sherlockian smarts proves irresistible. She also gets to wear disguises, transforming herself into everything from an elegant young sophisticate to a ragamuffin boy of the streets. She seems, all in all, to be having a wonderful time, which is why we can presuppose that there’s another Enola Holmes mystery waiting in the wings. The series was apparently brought to Brown by her older sister Paige, who shares a producer-credit with the young star. Hurrah for them both! It’s nice to see the future of cinema in good hands.