The Quick and Dirties: Step Up All In, Street Dance, Honey 2, etc.

Boys and girls, I know many of you spent yesterday in your Sunday best. Now it's Monday. Time to get back to work. Once again, it's time to get dirty. Quick and dirty, that is.

In my house, dance movies are all the rage. At least, they are with my wife and daughters. Therefore, I bump into a bunch of them by accident. Instead of spending a lot more time choreographing this post, I'm just tightening up my shoelaces and hitting the floor...

Step Up All In

(2014)

The fifth installment in the Step Up franchise finally does what all of the sequels should have done. It dispenses with all, or at least most, notions of story-telling. What little there is concerns our heroes trying to win a bunch of money in a national dance competition held in Las Vegas. There are also some hurt feelings between the lead dude and his old crew from the last movie. Of course, we have the prerequisite love story involving the aforementioned lead dude and the lead chick from Step Up 2 the Streets. By the way, that's still a really dumb title. Anyhoo, the gang's all here as everyone who was ever deemed one of the good guys in one of these movies shows up here. Well, everyone except Magic Mike, himself. The story is formulaic, at best, the acting is barely tolerable, and I couldn't be bothered to care about any of these people even if they suddenly burst into flames. But dammit, watching these dance scenes is just fun. They're full of energy and inventive. Everything around them is crap, but I wasn't exactly expecting To Kill a Mockingbird.

StreetDance

(2010)

Things aren't looking too good for a London street dance crew when their fearless leader suddenly ditches them. This includes giving the Heisman to his girlfriend and leaving her in charge. In-fighting, break-ups, make-ups, new love interest, villainous dance crew to compete with at the big competition, betrayal, yada-yada. I had my doubts for about thirty seconds, but the presence of a prestigious dance school which plays a huge role in things sealed the deal. This an unabashed Step Up rip-off. Yup, right down to the multi-ethnic team of underdogs and closely associating dancing with being a thug. Sigh. All told, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. After all, like the movies it obviously aspires to be, the dancing carries it. Besides that, it actually has a good performance from one of its actors. Charlotte Rampling shines in her role as one of the big wigs at the stuffy dance school. Sadly, she never gets to bust a move and we're only focused on those who do.

Honey 2

(2011)

Way back when, three years before the first Step Up came out, there was a little dance movie by the name of Honey, starring a very young Jessica Alba. Yup, her character's name was Honey. Sweet. She's not in this movie. So why the hell is this called Honey 2? Well, to capitalize on a name because our main character moves in with Honey's mom after getting out of juvie. Another dancing thug. Sensing the pattern, here? Anyhoo, our new girl puts together a crew in hopes of winning goo-gobs of money at the big competition. Did I say something about patterns? Hmmm. About halfway through this one, my son wanders out of his room into the living room, looks at the screen and says "Why are all these dance movies exactly the same." I laughed, the ladies in the house acted as if he committed blasphemy of the highest order. The dance-by-numbers plot hoofed along with at least one lead foot because it felt like the damn thing would never end. Yes, the dancing is good, but a step down from the previous two movies in this post. Step down, get it? Never mind. I didn't completely mind watching it because our protagonist is mucho caliente. At least, there's that.

Dance Flick

(2009)

The people who brought you Scary Movie, Date Movie, etc. make fun of dance movies, most notably Save the Last Dance. It's a movie in which every instant is supposed to be a joke. There is never a serious moment. Therefore, the filmmakers simply throw everything at the screen and some of it sticks. When it does, it causes you to laugh out loud. Of course, it works better the more familiar you are with the source material. Like everything else in this line of so-called spoofs, it almost completely dispenses with the notion of creativity. Instead of using the plethora of already laughable dance movies for inspiration it just reenacts one scene after another from some other dance flick (bad pun intended), adds something gross or otherwise outlandish and hopes its funny. All spoofs work better when you're familiar with the source material. The better ones are self-sufficient narratives that create a world of their own. For instance, Austin Powers is based on James Bond and other movie super-agents that came before him but he is at once a composite of them and a unique individual. The same goes for the killer or Sydney in Scream, or anyone in Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, or even the Wayans family's own brilliant I'm Gonna Git You Sucka Here, every character is simply whoever they were based on but in a dumber movie. So while you get a few laughs, it is at times regrettable and mostly forgettable. Actually, that's not fair. There is one thing I'll never forget: Mz. Cameltoe beat-boxing. Yup. Just like that.