Swimming boobs. Jumping boobs. Lounging boobs. Boobs having sex. Boobs at makeup mirrors. There are so many naked boobs in Starz new series “Magic City” that it should be called “Mammary City.”
But once you get past all those flying breasts (well, actually you never get past them), you’ll find a good series that centers around a luxurious Miami Beach hotel circa 1959 — and a city in transition, with American gangsters and Cuban refugees flooding in as nearby Havana falls to the communists.
The hotel, the Miramar Plaza, is half-owned by Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a Jewish, widowed, former cabana boy, now married to Vera (Olga Kurylenko), the most beautiful shiksa in Miami.
Ike is tough, and he don’t take no crap from nobody — well, except sometimes he’s gotta take some crap from one body, scary Jewish mobster Ben “The Butcher” Diamond (Danny Huston).
The series opens as Ike is trying to get the Miramar ready for its big New Year’s Eve bash featuring, yes, Frank Sinatra — while, at the same time, the restaurant and hotel workers’ union is threatening to shut the place down.
However, “The Butcher” also owns a big stake of the Miramar, and can make things happen that maybe Ike doesn’t want to happen. Unless Ike needs them to happen — like making the head of that pesky union disappear.
Into the mix comes the Butcher’s incredibly gorgeous wife, young Lily (Jessica Marais), who is as dangerous in her way as her mob-kingpin husband.
See, Lily is unhappy — and so needs to show her breasts as often as possible — especially to Ike’s bad-boy son, Stevie (Steven Strait), with whom she is doing the nasty.
Unfortunately, Stevie, has no idea (initially) that Lily is married to “The Butcher,” or he’d probably be more careful with his, er, meat orders.
Ike’s other grown son, good boy Danny (Christian Cooke), is in love with good girl Mercedes, a Cuban hotel maid whose mother is caught up in the Cuban revolution.
Yes, the boys are the living example of the Madonna/whore syndrome at work.
“Magic City,” which has already been renewed for a second season, was created by Mitch Glazer, who grew up in Miami during that era.
Clearly, Glazer either saw a limitless number of bare-breasted women as a young boy, or fantasized that every woman he saw was bare-breasted. All that gratuitous nudity, and too many scenes geared to make you say, “Aha! A 1958 Cadillac convertible — cool!” often overpower the storyline.
That doesn’t mean “Magic City” isn’t interesting and fun — it is — fun enough in fact, that Glazer didn’t need to stoop to dopey cheap shots to attract viewers.
The acting for the most part, is first rate, and Morgan so inhabits 1959-Ike that it’s like he, not Glazer, was the guy who grew up around these guys.
(He’s too young, FYI.)
Morgan’s got the perfect mixture of tough guy, smooth operator, soft-touch dad and smitten new groom.
Ditto Huston, who is like every tough guy you ever met in real life — or wished you’d met in real life.
Too bad the writing isn’t better.
Fewer cliches, fewer breasts, fewer “ahas” and they might have something great.