“Anytime a girl tells you her name starts with a flower, or a car or a stone, don’t bother asking what she does. Know what I’m saying?”

I don’t necessarily buy that Magic Mike is some not-so-guilty pleasure of soccer moms nationwide. I mean, it would make perfect sense, considering that the film was marketed on the chiseled pectorals and ripped abdominals of star Channing Tatum—as well as the beach muscles of a similarly buff supporting cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, and Kevin Nash. That, coupled with the fact that most husbands of soccer moms look like week old bowls of cottage cheese even when they’re not being compared to certified beefcakes.

But while exotic dancing does see its fair share of repetitions throughout the film—with awesome unbroken shots that emphasize the impressively athletic routines—Magic Mike is less of a hot-under-the-collar female gaze spectacle than a warped workplace bromance about a kind-hearted veteran stripper (Tatum) who takes a wayward kid (Pettyfer) under his wing. As he mentors his protégé and tries to make ends meet—running a construction crew and showing some semblance of a desire to launch a custom furniture business, while moonlighting as a dancer—Magic Mike also finds time to enjoy anonymous female attention (Olivia Munn) and fall in love with his understudy’s older sister (Cody Horn). The melodrama is low-stakes and the party comedy unremarkable, but it’s all propped up by a bantering script from Reid Carolin, filmmaking savvy from Steven Soderbergh, and a surprisingly convincing performance from Tatum, whose own experience as a teenage stripper informed the project. There’s also a subtle but pervasive subtext about the economic hardships faced by the working class exemplified by cash-only transactions, non-union workers, risky drug deals, and futile credit issues.

I’m not a soccer mom, but I certainly don’t mind tossing a few small bills at Soderbergh anytime he wants to throw a new project together, even if in this case I had to explain to my not-yet-a-soccer-mom wife why I was interested in a character study about the “cock-rocking kings of Tampa,” which, incidentally, is a nice companion piece to The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh’s other I-don’t-necessarily-want-to-broadcast-to-my-spouse-that-I-watched-this-film about a call girl who is played by a real life (former) porn star.