Review: Skimpy 'Magic Mike XXL' still knows how to please

• Critic%27s review%3A 3 stars %28out of 5%29

How does one review a movie like "Magic Mike XXL"? Do you like shiny thongs? Oiled pecs? Matt Bomer's butt? Five stars. But, like even the best of soft-core porn, "XXL" needs a storyline to hold together the scenes of unbridled hedonism like a labored G-string.

With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, "Magic Mike" (2012) turned out to be, rather shockingly, a legitimate movie, with character arcs, personal growth and genuine conflict, both internal and external: Come for the strippers, stay for the existential crises of rapidly aging men hustling for sweaty dollar bills.

"XXL" picks up about where the first film left off, with a few significant changes: Mike, no longer a stripper, has realized his dream of starting a furniture-designing business; he's also been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend; and Matthew McConaughey's brilliantly performed strip-club owner Dallas has fled the States with the wunderkind stripper played by Alex Pettyfer.

INTERVIEW:Matt Bomer brings the magic to 'Mike'

So that about takes care of all the actors who didn't feel like signing up for the sequel, and the film dispenses their fates quickly to get on with the action. Mike's old stripper buddies — Richie (Joe Manganiello), Ken (Bomer), Tito (Adam Rodriguez) and Tarzan (Kevin Nash) — call up Mike and inveigle him to join in on one last hurrah: a male-stripper convention at Myrtle Beach on Fourth of July weekend.

Mike balks at first, and why shouldn't he? He'd wanted out of the game and now owns, by all accounts, a successful business. Why should he road trip from Tampa to South Carolina in a fro-yo food truck with a duffel bag full of tear-away pants and handcuffs?

But then, as fate would have it, Ginuwine's raunchy "Pony," Magic Mike's signature stripping song, pops up on Spotify, and suddenly, the man who swore off stripping is grinding away in his workshop, sparks flying from a phallic metal rod.

It is, in a word, ridiculous. To the film's credit, it knows it's ridiculous. It's aiming for ridiculous, and it hits the mark as precisely as the strippers groove half-naked to their beats. The boys get high on molly, clown around in a food truck, seduce a convenience-store clerk, dominate a drag show, and get schooled in the art of seduction by Michael Strahan and Donald Glover in a Southern sort-of brothel run by domineering Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith), all interspersed with scenes of choreographed air sex and lap dances.

But that winning (if threadbare) formula is unsustainable. The plot, much like the thongs, demands padding, and that means Amber Heard playing Mike's dour love interest. Her Zoe is a perpetually sullen dilettante with whom Mike has zero chemistry and nothing in common. But because convention demands it, he pursues her through the finale, where the five buddies give it their all (while wearing the least) to a convention hall packed with shrieking women.

It has all the artistic depth of an actual strip show, and it couldn't possibly appeal to anyone outside its given demographic. But there's still plenty of ribald magic in "XXL's" Mike for anyone with a few extra sweaty dollar bills to throw in.

Reach the reporter at barbara.vandenburgh@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8371. Twitter.com/BabsVan.

'Magic Mike XXL'

Director: Gregory Jacobs.

Cast: Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Amber Heard.

Rating: Rated R for strong sexual content, pervasive language, some nudity and drug use.