Battle of the Year

Directed by Benson Lee.

2013. Rated PG-13, 110 minutes.

Cast:

Josh Holloway

Laz Alonso

Chris Brown

Josh Peck

Ivan "Flipz" Velez

Jon "Do Knock" Cruz

Jesse "Casper" Brown

Sawandi Wilson

Richard Maguire

Caity Lotz

I love the women in my life. My wife is still the apple of my eye. My two daughters take turns wrapping me around their fingers. It only makes sense that I would say yes and plop my ass on the couch when begged asked to watch Battle of the Year with them. This is pretty much how I've seen every dance movie they could get their hands on over the last decade. Will I ever learn? Probably not.

So what's going on with this one?

Glad you asked. It's like this:

Every year, Paris hosts "Battle of the Year." It's an international b-boying competition, or break dancing contest forthe unhip, featuring teams from around the globe. A team representing the good o'l U.S. of A. has not won in a dozen years. Dante (Alonso), the super rich multi-media mogul who sponsors the team, decides its time to shake things up. He reaches out to Jason (Holloway), one of his old homies from around the way, to coach this year's squad. Jason is not super rich or a multi-media mogul. He's a reclusive drunk whose been drowning his sorrows in a bottle ever since his wife and son died in a car wreck. He reluctantly takes the job on the condition that he be allowed to do it "his way." Dancing and arguing ensues.

Why the arguing?

It's simple, really. When Jason shakes things up, he really shakes things up. After one look at last year's team, he kicks them all to the curb and decides to hold a mass audition. Once he's picked  the best twenty-something dancers, he takes them to what looks like an abandoned college dormitory from fifty years ago where he works the dog crap out of them in the name of molding them into a team. Of course, there's a catch. There are nine weeks left until "Battle of the Year." Each week, our drunken dance coach will send one of the boys packing.

Hmm...where have I heard of such a format before?

Oh yeah, every reality TV competition ever.

Okay, boys and girls. It's time to run down the sports dance movie movie checklist!

Drunken coach? Check. We covered this.

Overbearing team owner? Check. Literally, in the very next scene after agreeing to let Jason coach "his way," Dante starts bitching about how Jason is coaching. Asshole.

Supremely talented, but selfish superstar? Check. This guy is played by Chris Brown, a real life supremely talented, but selfish superstar. Seriously, of all the celebrities, he's the most perplexing to me. The dude is a great, I mean a GREAT dancer, and an aiight singer. On the other hand, what I know of him as a person screams spoiled brat that I would not want to be in the same room with. Hey, that's exactly like his character! Should be easy playing a version of yourself, right? Well, Chris Brown is a great, I mean GREAT dancer. Not so much on the acting.

Game-changing injury to said superstar? I would say check, but I don't want to spoil anything.

Lots of in-fighting while our boys grow as a team? Check. Basically, it's like one of those "Real Housewives" show with less hair and makeup. Just to ensure that's the case we get enough different types together. We already mentioned the superstar. There's also his rival from the neighborhood. Then we have the gay dude, the guy who hates gay dudes, and so on.

Awe inspiring sports dance scenes? Check. This is the one thing Battle of the Year has going for it. Literally. the dance scenes are kinetic and acrobatic. They're fun to watch even though it appears the frame rate has been sped up for these. Or, do I mean slowed down? I forget how that works. Whatever. The moves look too fast.

Wait...what am I doing? Praising something about this movie? Let's get back to our regularly scheduled program. Let's talk about the acting. It's not universally bad, but the people asked to do the most acting are just not good. Exempting Chris Brown from the conversation, let's move on to the others. The rest of the dancers were as bad as Mr. Brown or worse. Laz Alonso was pretty good, but continuing to speak about that doesn't fit my movie bashing agenda so let's move on to Josh Holloway. He's that odd kind of bad. He's really into it, and is arguably a better actor than anyone else in the cast. The problem is he's so miscast I don't believe a single word out of his mouth. There is no way I can roll with the idea that this guy was a former b-boy with legendary battle wins under his belt. I'm guessing Channing Tatum, or Columbus Short were both busy...or got a look at the script and chose wisely. I wish I had.

Damn family.

Jumping the Broom

Directed by Salim Akil.

2011. Rated PG-13, 112 minutes.
Cast:
Paula Patton
Laz Alonso
Angela Bassett
Loretta Devine
Mike Epps
Meagan Good
Tasha Smith
Julie Bowen
Valerie Pettiford
DeRay Davis
Gary Doudan
Romeo Miller
Brian Stokes Mitchell

And the y lived happily ever after. That Jumping the Broom ends this way should not be a surprise. It’s a romantic comedy named after a centuries old wedding tradition. You should already know how it ends. Our main character is food of saying “the details make the person.” So it is in the details where JtB is made or broken. That main character is Sabrina (Patton). Tired of dealing with no-good men, she asks God to send her a soul mate and vows abstinence until He does. Don’t worry, she immediately bumps into Jason (Alonso), who is apparently “the one.” Skip ahead a bit to after what we’re told is “five incredible months” he proposes, she says yes and then the movie starts.

The nuptials are to be held at the mansion of Sabrina’s rich parents on Martha’s Vineyard. Evidently, they’ve been rich a very long time. There is one little detail that makes this movie go. Sabrina has never met Jason’s family. They’re quite the opposite of Sabrina’s folks. Jason’s family are working class people from Brooklyn. Nevermind that no one of them speaks with anything that sounds even remotely like a New York accent. Just know that they are on their way to the Vineyard fro the wedding and Mom, the widowed Mrs. Taylor (Devine) is none too pleased that she’s never met her future daughter-in-law. Rich people interacting with poor people and lots of melodrama ensues.

Details keep flying at us. How well we deal with them will determine whether or not we enjoy it. They come fast and most of them help keep this a fairly light affair, moving us quickly through the near two hour runtime. The problem is after a while there’s so much going on the movie feels cluttered. Most of these strands are amusing but not always necessary. It begins to feel like the wedding episode of a daytime soap opera. Among those things that need to be cut entirely is the language switches. From time to time our wealthy characters will suddenly start speaking French. It’s presented like its just something sophisticated rich folks do. Maybe, but it comes across as strange and certainly isn’t needed to provide us with a clear distinction between the classes. The rest of the movie does a perfectly fine job establishing this.

Still, there is another detail that could stand some fleshing out. It’s really just one line of dialogue, but its drawn from history and transcends the movie. However, it may do so in a disasterous manner. In a spiteful retort to Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Watson (Bassett) proclaims her family once owned slaves. Yes, there really were blacks that owned slaves. Most often, they purchased them as a way to get/keep them from under the thumb of white slaveowners whom, as we know, were harsh taskmasters to understate it by a couple thousands miles. To those not aware of this historical tidbit, Bassett’s line goes far beyond the villainy its trying to assign to her character. It reeks of self-hatred and shows a level of elitism even greater than I think the filmmakers are going for. A thirty second explanation would balance this. Those is charge should never assume their audience is stupid. By the same token they also should assume knowledge of any particular historic fact. This is especially true when the much more widely known and still practiced tradition that the movie is named after is explained in full.

That entire previous paragraph might be nit-picking. The more important issues to our enjoyment are the crowded feeling it gives us, as I’ve already mentioned, and the bombardment of clichés we’re hit with. The things that happen in most rom-coms happen here. In addition, it’s also heavily influenced by the Tyler Perry canon. Thankfully, it’s not as loud or outlandish as those films, but the formula of secular humor punctuated by Christian heedings is clearly visible. To this end, it should be noted that Evangelist Bishop T. D. Jakes, who’s made several movies himself, has a small role and is one of the producers.

There are some good things here. As I’ve said, much of it is amusing. It doesn’t often cause uproarious laughter, but there are some chuckles to be had. Our cast is game. The continuous sparring between Angela Bassett and Loretta Devine is enjoyable melodrama. Leads Patton and Alonso acquit themselves well enough and fans of Romeo can rejoice he’s a slightly better actor than his dad (Master P). Admittedly, that last one isn’t saying much but roll with it. In all, it adds up to one big giant package of “meh.”

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