The Merry Gentlemenâcoming to Netflix tomorrowâis a heartwarming Christmas movie about a group of small-town neighbors who come together to save a beloved local bar… by transforming it into a strip club. Such is the bizarre, contradictory nature of this new holiday film, which combines Magic Mike eye candy with Hallmark wholesomeness. The result? A uniquely sex-less form of sexiness.
Directed by Peter Sullivan, with a screenplay by Marla Sokoloff, The Merry Gentlemen stars Brit Robertson as Ashley, a New York City “Jingle Belle” dancer (a generic stand-in for the Rockettes) who gets canned for being too old, just before the big Christmas show. She slinks back to her neglected home for the holidays, and learns her parents face eviction on the small-town performing venue that they own. Ashley hatches a plan to pay back her parents $30,000 debt: Force the local handyman (Chad Michael Murray)âa hot guy named Luke that she literally just metâto become a stripper!
Luke, along with his fellow small-town hot guys, agree to play along with Ashley’s scheme to put-together what she calls an “all-male, Christmas-themed revue.” Don’t get it twisted, these beefcakes may be pretty, but they won’t be flashing anyone. They’re just taking off their shirts! And thrusting their pelvis. And stroking their crotches with Christmas lights. And, ok, fine, maybe very briefly flashing their “Naughty Elf” boxer-clad booties.
It’s undeniably sexual. And yet, somehow, the movie never strays from its TV-PG rating (a rating that generally means that content is appropriate for anyone over the age of 10). Director Peter Sullivan has managed to divorce the concept of stripping from the concept of sex. These men are hot in the sense that they are fake, sculpted objects to be looked at. But they are not hot in the sense that they are sexual beings who have intercourse, let alone know what intercourse is. No one in the film acknowledges sex as a concept. None of the women who cheer for these shirtless men seem to be interested in having sex. At one point, a costume designer is confronted by Murray’s pronounced “V” as his pants slip down, and reprimanded that “his eyes are up there,” and that’s as close as anyone gets to exhibiting carnal desires.
It’s both fascinating, and disorienting. On the one hand, the practice of straight women objectifying hot guys has long been portrayed as less salacious than straight men objectifying hot girls. (Perhaps because women aren’t seen as sexual threats, or because their sexual desires aren’t taken seriously.) On the other, I’ve never seen an attempt to rebrand male nudity into completely innocent, family-friendly, holiday-themed content. Even the Magic Mike movies were rated R. Of course they were! Those movies are about stripping! People go to see strippers, and movies about strippers, because they’re horny!
But not so in the sex-less world of The Merry Gentlemen. Murray and Robertson share a few tender, closed-mouth kissesâonce while Murray is shirtless and glisteningâand that’s that on that. Like the end of a Disney princess movie or a middle-grade romance novel, there’s no hint that this couple will ever do anything more than kiss for the duration of their happily-ever-after. Nor is there any indication that any townsfolk are upset to see their favorite mom-and-pop bar transformed into a mom-and-pop strip club. I suppose it’s a Christmas miracle.
The post Netflix’s ‘The Merry Gentlemen’ Is An Odd Mesh of Hallmark and ‘Magic Mike’ appeared first on Decider.
