Some people learn to dance, Some people were born to. Some people can sit through this crap, I just had to.
There is obviously a market for these type of films with no substantial story which is filled to the brim with cliched characters that are so one dimensional that even in a 3D film their roles struggle to jump of the screen and offer anything more than tedious, comically stiff performances. I’m clearly not the person this film is marketed at but the people who enjoy previous incarnations of these films are going to love it.
Luke (Rick Malambri) owns a club/dance studio in a Brooklyn warehouse he inherited from his parents that is due to be put up for sale due to falling short with the mortgage payments. Lucky then that the upcoming World Jam dancing tournament offers a prize payment big enough to save it. Luke has a team of dancers and he also walks the streets of New York with a video camera filming dancers and recruiting new talents for his team ‘The Pirates’ that includes new arrival Moose (Adam G Sevani), a Step Up 2 survivor, and former Home & Away star Sharni Vinson as Natalie, the love interest to Luke and catalyst to the teams dissolve when she is revealed to have connections to the Pirates rivals “The Samurai’s”. Obviously the story doesn’t end with them losing the tournament and the boy doesn’t end up getting the girl. Sorry if I spoiled anything.
Some half hearted sub plots fill the gaps between the dancing scenes with Luke’s passion for film making almost dominating the story over the Hip Hop dancing quest and there is also the issue of Moose trying to give up dancing to go to college but inevitably getting to involved with it which causes issues with his school work and with best friend Camille (Alyson Stoner) from the original Step Up movie. It’s Moose and Camille who offer the movies one true outstanding moment outside the Dance Offs as the pair dance down a quiet New York street in a routine that oozes the romance and talent of a Gene Kelly movie with the use of props, scenery and wonderful music all used for a truly enjoyable short scene, if only the rest of the film had this level of charm and talent.
The real star of the film is the dancing and fans of ‘dancing’ movies or the TV Show ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ will be right at home as teams of visually interesting dancers face off to progress to the next round performing some stunning outrageous elaborate routines that fully utilize the 3D filming. The multiple layers of dancers are all given a sense of depth as well as throwing moves off the screen at you which work extremely well a majority of the time without being too gimmicky and with the added effect of dust clouds, water and lights used in the performances it makes it something visually spectacular which unfortunately only happens three times in the whole film. It really is incredible thing to watch.
The dancing however doesn’t save the film from the fact it’s full of clunky dialog which is delivered as bad as you could expect from unbelievable stiff performances from a terrible script. It’s nice to see a film actually filmed in 3D and not added post production but there were some issues with the 3D, at times it made characters look like 2D cutouts hovering above the background which never look right and become distracting and there were some gimmicky additional use of it with a horrible scene where Luke and Natalie stand over an air vent and spray their CGI Slushy drinks into the air in your face, it looked terrible but having said that it was a quite enjoyable 3D experience.
Overall a terrible film but the dancing will give you some high levels of entertainment but they come few and far between. One for the fans only and one for people who desperately need a reasonable 3D experience after the monstrosities of Clash of Titans and Last Air Bender.
