Summer is here, a time for ice cream, beach frolics, and giant dicks bobbing gently in the breeze. This weekend you can take your pick of three randy new sex comedies: Magic Mike XXL, a sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s 2012 hit, brings back Channing Tatum as the title character, a male stripper known for reducing women to jelly with his chiseled physique and killer dance moves. The Overnight, the latest indie project from sibling producers Jay and Mark Duplass, is sort of a “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Kink?” in which two young couples get together for dinner and sexual boundaries are crossed as the night stretches on. But the real gem here is The Little Death, a fine debut feature by Australian writer-director Josh Lawson in which five young couples wrestle with their perverse impulses. Weirdly, the movies’ marketing and distribution parallel their respective attitudes toward sex—the farther each is from the American mainstream, the more private and distinctive its sex.
Ironically the most memorable scene in The Overnight plays like a grotesque parody of Magic Mike XXL. Newcomers to LA, stay-at-home dad Alex (Adam Scott) and working wife Emily (Taylor Schilling) are in the local park with their young son when he strikes up a friendship with another boy, and the boy’s father, a friendly, laid-back hipster named Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), persuades them to come to dinner that evening with him and his French wife, Charlotte (Judith Godrèche). The families dine together, and later that evening, as the boys sleep, the parents drink and blow bongs, the vibe getting wilder by the minute. When Kurt sheds his shorts by the pool, revealing his gigantic penis, Alex pulls his wife aside for a conference and ultimately announces, “I have an abnormally small dick.” Kurt isn’t having any of this, and after he takes Alex aside for a pep talk—”You’re a stud horse!”—they perform an impromptu striptease. Kurt may be XXL, but as their dance reveals, Alex is decidedly S.
The Overnight ★★★ Directed by Patrick Brice
The Little Death ★★★ Directed by Josh Lawson
