A most unexpected disappearance

I've gotten way behind on my Excel spreadsheet of all the films I've ever seen. It's not worth getting into. I've got a Word document with the exact same information, but I also have a spreadsheet. It doesn't have about the last 500 movies I've seen. So I've been catching up.

In the course of going backward through my Letterboxd diary so as to be sure to add everything, I came across Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which I watched in January of 2018, to give you some idea of my progress. (I still have about 300 to go.) In conjunction with adding the movie, I read a review of it on the site I used to write for ten years ago, All Movie Guide.

That review mentioned Channing Tatum, which made me realize something surprising:

That was the last time I had seen Channing Tatum in a movie.

You know, Channing Tatum, one of the world's biggest and brightest young stars. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen his face grace a poster or his biceps burst through a trailer.

As it turns out, Tatum has been in only two movies since I saw Kingsman. Actually, he's not "in" either of them; only his voice is. He voices the main character in Smallfoot, presumably alongside Zendaya, who is Meechee. But I didn't see that. I did see this year's Lego Movie 2, but he's only the voice of Superman in that one, a tiny role, if I remember correctly.

In other words, a role he could have done over breakfast one day while feeding his child.

Tatum's absence is, indeed, due to fatherhood, or so he claimed when Variety caught up with him last September. "I've got a kid, man," he told Variety, when Variety noticed he'd had a scant year and asked him about it. "That's the biggest job I have."

But also in that article came the revelation that he was about to end his informal hiatus, to get back to work. He didn't do that. Lego 2 couldn't have been what he was talking about, and besides, by September he'd probably already recorded that part. There's something called America: The Motion Picture that is listed in pre-production on IMDB, but there also he provides only a voice, and you'd think, wouldn't have done so yet. His next live action movie appears to be Free Guy, a comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, next July. He's listed fourth in the cast ... so maybe that's what he was talking about?

Still and all, it's a bit of a strange thing for a guy in his Hollywood prime -- his absolute prime -- to take what amounts to two years off, and sort of going on three. He's only 39. Some actors don't even hit their prime until their 40s.

But I wonder if I'd be saying the same thing if he were a woman.

Earlier this year I wrote about Rachel McAdams, who is only 18 months older than Tatum and similarly in her prime, and how she was probably about to take a couple years off because she was having a baby. That was just a deduction from the timing of her child's birth and the lack of upcoming projects on her IMDB page. But I didn't note my surprise that she'd be taking time off to be a parent. With Tatum, I did.

Well, good on Channing Tatum then. Be a dad. Let your accountant continue to invest your millions. Now's the time your child will remember that you were around. And he or she won't have to grow up on a damn movie set.

Because when you are really ready to return, you'll have no shortage of offers.