Director: Scott Speer
Screenwriter(s): Jenny Mayer
Producer: Jon M. Chu
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
In Theaters: July 27th, 2012
Run Time: 99 minutes
Starring: Kathryn McCormick, Ryan Guzman, & Cleopatra Coleman
Genre(s): drama/music/romance
Storyline: The Mob sets the dancing against the vibrant backdrop of Miami. Emily arrives in Miami with aspirations of becoming a professional dancer and soon falls in love with Sean, a young man who leads a dance crew in elaborate, cutting-edge flash mobs, called “The Mob”. When a wealthy business man threatens to develop The Mob’s historic neighborhood and displace thousands-of people, Emily must work together with Sean and The Mob to turn their performance art into protest art, and risk losing their dreams to fight for a greater cause. (From IMBD.com)
Movie Trailer:
My Review: What can I say about a movie that has managed to completely dissapoint me on many levels? Let me start by my choice of movie posters you see above. I chose that poster specifically because 1. I can’t stand the one with the “love interest” as the main picture and 2. It’s a fabrication of the truth in order to get those of us who love Moose and the last 2 Step Up movies HE HAS ACTUALLY BEEN IN to go see this one. Well, SPOILER ALERT, if you’re planning on seeing this movie in hopes of seeing more Moose moves, I suggest you buy Step Up 2 & 3 because he’s in this movie for all of about 3 minutes. I actually think it’s less than that, but I’m rounding up here. He’s in the very tail end of the movie and gets very little camera time. While I love Moose and was very upset he wasn’t in the movie at all I was even more upset that neither was MSA or the Pirates. With the exception of 2 representatives from each crew, this needed all the help it could get!
What differed so much for me was also the lack of a competition mixed into the story. At least with the last two movies (I refuse to acknowledge the first Step Up movie) there was a true purpose and goal. This movie, while it did not lack in dialogue (more talking than dancing for sure) did not connect with me whatsoever. I did not feel their desire to make statements with their dancing, something I felt they did more of with their opening dance routine than when they decided (towards the end) to make statements through dance.
The routines were interesting and definitely showcased a lot of other dances that we wouldn’t normally consider cool and that worked. But being there was only 5 dances in this movie and each one was at most 5 minutes long that still left about 75 minutes of dialogue. Are you cringing yet? I sure was sitting in the movie theater. Now, I’ve been told there were the same amount of dances in the other two movies I happened to love. I have not verified if this is true. But if it is, I’d argue the element that was missing then was bringing back the old familiar faces. Cause as far as I’m concerned there was nothing memorable about The Mob. If you were to ask me to name let alone describe any of the dancers from this new crew, all I got for you is the smokin’ hot DJ, the graffiti dude, and Twitch (not his name in the movie I know). The latter also doesn’t count because he’s from Step Up 3-D, an original from The Pirates crew.
The love interest was even more corny than the first movie and her ambition to join that ballet company was a joke that shouldn’t even have been a story line since it falls flat in the end. The only mention we get of that whole unnecessary ordeal is when she, in passing, tells someone (probably her father or love interest) that she didn’t make it into the dance company. What?! After you made me suffer through Mia Michaels character acting like she’s all that and a bag of chips you left it like that? The least you could have done was had her among the crowd when Emily (I think that was her characters name) danced that dumb number with her love interest at the end of the movie. What was the point? it was an odd place and time especially since she wasn’t there to see it, love it, and open up a spot for her. That would have made the movie score a “C+” with me at least!
If they dare to do a 5th Step Up movie, I will need MSA and The Pirates to be in it and for more than just a few minutes before I’d even consider going to see it.
My Rating: C-
No comments:
Post a Comment