Step Up Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)August 10th, 2006
STEP UP
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Horribly clichéd and utterly predictable, STEP UP is completely dead when it isn't dancing -- and isn't much better when it is. Featuring Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum, two actors who can't act and don't even try, it is literally laughably bad.
As Tyler Gage, Tatum plays a handsome hunk who lives with a foster family and is just about the white kid in all-black ghetto. Called "a loser who's heading nowhere fast," he doesn't care about anything, and thinks trashing schools and stealing cars is an amusing way to pass the time. This former hobby earns him two-hundred hours of community service in the school that he and his buddies tried to destroy. Of course, it's a school of the arts, where Nora (Dewan) has conveniently just lost her dancing partner because of a hurt ankle.
Think Tyler might want to try out to be Nora's partner? Think he'll prove to be unreliable? Think they might fall in love? And do you think the movie might end with a big dance number? You are SO smart. You must have seen the last thousand of the movies with this exact plot. Most were much better than STEP UP. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
At first, Tyler, a sullen teen with a classic bad attitude problem, spends his time mopping the floors at the school he vandalized. When the head of the school (Rachel Griffiths, in a role so underwritten that it barely exists) tells Tyler that the damage he caused was so extensive that they would have to award one less scholarship next year, Tyler doesn't care in the slightest.
Tyler eventually lands the position of Nora's partner but refuses to wear tights. Unmanly, etc. At first he tries to dance in super baggy jeans but realizes that he has to switch to just slightly less baggy sweat pants instead.
Tyler lives in an unusual ghetto. There are no drugs, and people leave their doors unlocked. The movie treats the crimes of stealing cars and vandalizing property as something that's just funny. Only murder is taken seriously. The film comes out unequivocally against killing people.
Without a single genuine or interesting character in the story, it falls to the dancing to carry the picture. But, there is remarkably little dancing in the movie. Oh, there are lots of scenes with little snippets of moves, but we don't see anything more than very brief excerts until the ending dance number, which lasts about three minutes and is very badly lit.
My "favorite" part of the story is the threat that Nora's mom keeps making. If Nora doesn't get recruited by a dance school before she graduates from high school, she will have to go to Yale or one of the other Ivy League schools. Poor little rich girl.
Maybe I missed the point of the entire film. Perhaps I was supposed to view it as a parody of every hackneyed dance movie ever made. But I don't think so. Director Anne Fletcher appears to be completely oblivious as to how atrocious her movie really is.
STEP UP runs way, way too long at 1:53. It is rated PG-13 for "thematic elements, brief violence and innuendo" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, August 11, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
