Back On the Strip: A Big Member, But Few Laughs
By Liam Lacey
Rating: C
A bawdy comedy about male strippers that lives up to mediocre expectations, Back On the Strip is directed and co-written by Chris Spencer who has previously worked with the Wayan Brothers comedy team.
That’s a good indication of the sort of patchwork, ribald silliness-slash-parody of the live-nude-males genre, principally the Magic Mike franchise, with bits from Boogie Nights, and the middle-aged male bonding of British feel-good comedy, The Full Monty.
Though raunchy, Back On the Strip plays it safe, avoiding full frontal nudity in a sugary fable about friendship and romance. Spence Moore II, a young actor with an angelic face and athletic physique, stars as Merlin, an aspiring but accident-prone magician, who is doted on by his single mom, Verna (Tiffany Haddish).
After losing his pants during a bungled high school magic act, Merlin discovers, to his humiliation, that audiences are more interested in the contents of his pants than the skill of his hands. The object of attention, seen only under his dark underwear, appears to be a ridiculously long tube sock stuffed with tennis balls.
Even into his mid-twenties, when he works as a party clown, Merlin remains sexually innocent, even virginal, while holding a torch for his childhood sweetheart, Robin (Raigan Harris). Merlin’s mom supports him unconditionally, including provides a running offscreen narrative of his career, and a one-way ticket to Las Vegas, where she once worked.
There, Merlin meets her old friend, pot-smoking motel owner Rita (Colleen Camp). Rita shows him posters of a once-popular male strip tease revue, the Chocolate Chips.
One night at the motel, while attempting to entertain a women’s group with a magic show, Merlin has another of his frequent trouser-dropping accidents. The event, and the audience’s raucous enthusiasm, is witnessed by Luther (Wesley Snipes), a former star of the Chocolate Chips.
Luther, who lost his leg in an accident several years before and now walks with a cane, decides to reassemble and promote the old team, with Merlin, a.k.a. “Black Magic,” as the new headliner. The old crew includes the plus-sized Desmond “Da Body” Day (Faizon Love), who is now running an auto-body shop; Amos (Sexy Slim) Fowler (a standout J.B. Smoove), as an oversexed preacher; and Tyriq “Da Face” Cox (Bill Bellamy), a stay-at-home father of quadruplet daughters.
Finally, there’s the mysterious mask-wearing Dr. X (Gary Owen), now a plastic surgeon, who wears a lot of spray tan, and does not really qualify as Chocolate.
Scenes showing the reformation of the Chocolate Chips, replete with interpersonal rivalries and dad body dance moves, are sporadically funny, as each actor gets his few minutes of screen time to show his comedy chops. Kevin Hart also has a cameo, in his angry cockerel mode, as a father at a children’s party, who doesn’t like the way women are hypnotized by the way the clown bounces on a trampoline. Post-credit outtakes suggest there was a lot of improvising to choose from.
Running around two hours, Back On the Strip flounders toward a conclusion. Because his character doesn’t dance, Snipes seems underemployed here, helped a little by a romantic subplot.
The film’s major subplot, following Merlin’s efforts to rescue Robin from her fiancé — an odious social media influencer (Ryan Alexander Holmes) — slows the momentum and proves anticlimactic. Emboldened by his onstage success, Merlin earns the confidence to win Robin by revealing his big heart.
Back on the Strip. Directed by Chris Spencer. Written by Chris Spencer and Eric Daniel. Starring Spence Moore II, Wesley Snipes, Tiffany Haddish, Raigan Harris, JB Smoove, Gary Owen, Bill Bellamy, Faizon Love, and Colleen Camp. In theatres on August 18.