I guess Channing Tatum is back

When I was in the cool old cinema in Ballarat (as mentioned yesterday), I noticed the two adjacent posters you see here. Both movies feature Channing Tatum. It's the sort of detail you don't usually see in real life, often because stars' movies tend to be spaced out at greater intervals, each one intending to capitalize on the next fertile release period of the calendar year. But you'd see it plenty in a movie about a movie star, to show just how famous he or she actually is.

One of the reasons I went beyond noticing it to writing about it here was that a few years back, I examined how Tatum was sort of on the verge of losing his fame.

In this post, which is already two-and-a-half years old now, I wrote about Tatum's unexpected disappearance from the scene, which was already in full bloom by then. Both of the two movies I mentioned at the end of that post -- America: The Motion Picture and Free Guy -- finally came out in 2021, but his roles were so small in them, and it's just voice work in the former, that that hardly felt like a reclaiming of the spotlight. In fact, his cameo in Free Guy had such a sort of desperate quality to it, it felt like an attempt by a filmmaker to prop up the sagging career of a guy we used to know who now needed our help. Free Guy suggested to me that Channing Tatum had forgotten how to be a movie star.

I guess he's remembered.

Now, Dog is probably not anyone's idea of a big return to form. In fact, there's something about its "soldier and his dog" story that seems like a logical step further into the ghetto of obscurity, an attempt at a comeback that just proves how marginalized he's become. At a certain point in some people's careers, they become suited for no better than movies that are intended purely for the consumption of American conservatives, who love their soldiers and their dogs. (Side note: I noticed Dog is being advertised at a local cinema with upcoming BYOD -- Bring Your Own Dog -- sessions. That sounds ... messy.)

But then The Lost City stars Sandra Bullock, who isn't in her peak period either, but is still close enough to it to retain her spot on the A list. For now. 

In any case, having two movie posters side by side in a mainstream movie theater is a sure sign of something.

The Lost City hasn't come out either here or America, but the early verdict is in on Dog, which has a 61 on Metacritic. Promising start. Maybe even the coastal elites will want to watch this one.

Tatum, he may yet return to the elite, though it will take a concerted effort over the next few years. As he is now the parent of at least one young child -- the thing that caused him to sort of step away in the first place -- it remains to be seen if he's got the hustle to get back to the top, or prefers a few paychecks here and there to put food on the table for his son.

Me, I hope we see him back filling that niche he filled ten years ago, when he could make both action movies and comedies come to life. Because cinema needs a Channing Tatum, a loveable lunkhead who feels comfortable in his own skin, and not the one who seemed so awkward and out of place in Free Guy.