Very rarely do documentaries merit sequels. It makes sense when there are new developments in the subject matter (An Inconvenient Truth). More often than not, nonfiction sequels are not unlike traditional fictional films in that sequels are churned out to capitalize on the success of a breakout hit. We see this in superfluous sequels to Super Size Me and March of the Penguins. So what do you think is the justification for this follow-up to a 2017 feature-length commercial for an all-male Atlanta strip club?
I reviewed the first All Male, All Nude and thought it did exactly what it set out to do, which was to entertain and provide some insight into the world of male stripping (while serving as a pretty obvious advertisement for Atlanta’s Swinging Richards night spot). Now director Gerald McCullouch has traveled to Georgia’s southern neighbor, all the way to the tip of Florida. One of the subjects of the first film, Matt Colunga, who was a dancer and a DJ at Swinging Richards, has set up his own venue next door to Fort Lauderdale in Wilton Manors, which has the second largest gay population per capita in the country.
This time the title is false. Fort Lauderdale/Milton Manors forbids dancers from taking it all off, and their butts have to be covered (there is no size requirement of what covers it—the cloth could be as thin as dental floss, so there’s your loop-hole ). Since the strippers do not bear all, the club is technically a go-go bar, but if your only interest in watching this is for the nudity, fret not, McCullouch makes sure all of the dancers he interviews drop trou at some point or another, just not when they are on stage.
A lot of Johnsons plays like an instructional video for how to run a successful male strip club and drones on a lot more than the last film. Colunga goes through every detail of how he runs the establishment: how he instructs his dancers to put on a good striptease, how much they pay in to be on stage, and the fact that they aren’t allowed to drink on the job.
The dancers at Johnsons seem more invested in the art form, as opposed to the guys from Swinging Richards, who mostly just stood around awkwardly humping the air and waiting for customers to stuff dollar bills into their G-strings. The dancers at Johnsons know how to put on a proper striptease, and they sure give those polls a workout.
I suppose it’s interesting to find out about their day jobs (a lot of time is spent following around Alexander, who entertains at kids parties dressed up like Spider-Man or Harry Potter). Like the first time around, I can’t help but nitpick the director’s choices of whom to spend time with. Although the first film was heavily focused on white dancers and never once interviewed any of the several black performers, this time around, given the Florida setting, the majority of the dancers profiled are Latino, but again I can’t help but call out that he only interviews one black stripper, briefly. However, the new film straight up answers the question of who’s gay; Colunga says he likes to keep the staff split down the middle, 50/50 gay and straight.
Colunga himself is an amateur bodybuilder, and his efforts there, for no apparent reason, take up 10 minutes of screen time—during which we watch him get a spray tan while wearing nothing but a sock over his junk, which he proudly boasts is too big for the sock the spray tanner offered him. He tells us he was bullied for being overweight when he was growing up, and that’s why he went into bodybuilding. Now he says Johnsons showcases a variety of looks, ranging from skinny twinks to muscle boys, but despite his proclamations of being “body positive,” Johnsons doesn’t feature any chubby or bear body types. Colunga is also given to pinching the dancers’ bellies and reprimanding them when they are getting out of shape. So this documentary tells us without any awareness to the irony that he went from bullied overweight kid to fat-shaming strip club owner.
Also missing from this entry is any kind of intriguing thoughts coming from the subjects. Stripping makes you less introverted? You don’t say? Toward the end, McCullough slaps together a tragic narrative about a dancer named Javi, who was fired from Johnsons for ambiguous reasons. As with the last film, there are many times when the narrative could have veered off and dealt with some heavier subjects, but instead McCullough brings the focus back to shots of guys dancing along to irritatingly bad filler music. Will McCullough be slapping together another sequel? Honestly, I wouldn’t mind. As silly as they are, these two films did help me pick where to vacation.
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