Magic Mike XXL reviewed: stripping can be sexy – but lying on a pinned-down woman’s face is not

It’s hard to overstate how much I wanted to like Magic Mike XXL, the sequel to the 2012 Steven Soderbergh hit about male strippers. I have long proclaimed loudly to anyone who will listen that the first film is a stroke of genius, a subtle, sweet and, yes, gloriously sweaty exploration not just of women’s desire but of men’s too. It also, incidentally, features one of the last pre-Oscar performances from Matthew McConaughey before he got all serious in True Detective and Dallas Buyers Club, working that pop-eyed southern charm and those absurdly large abs in a tiny yellow crop-top and grotesquely leathery y-fronts until the audience wasn’t sure whether it was tickled or turned on.

We had already been alerted to the tragedy that there would be no McConaughey in the second film. And yet the trailer was still full of promise, striking that very fine balance between self-aware absurdity and genuine sexiness.