The film stars Daniel MacIvor, Carroll Godsman, Jack Griffin Mazieka, Jonathan Torrens, and Joshua Peace in pastiche recreations of life at the Athletic Model Guild, mixed with interviews with models and photographers whose work actually appeared in the early magazines, including Jack LaLanne and Joe Dallesandro.

[3] The person behind the literature was Bob Mizer, who "maintained a magazine and developed sexually explicit men's films for over 40 years."

As examined in the Ottawa Citizen, "this odd and colourful mix of interviews, dramatizations, re-creations and naughty homoerotic hanky-panky is made in the style-reflects-content story of Bob Mizer (played by Daniel MacIvor), the man who practically invented the 1950s idea of using muscle magazines to sell sex disguised as athleticism.

Matt Radz of The Gazette explains that "but beefcake demonstrate, in a very graphic manner, plenty of other reasons why in the race to bare all, male nudity has always finished a very distant second.

Radz claims "Beefcake puts so many genitals on display, the title of that promising debut movie could be also used to describe this sophomore effort".