About a month back, I received a text from my sister, who lives on the East Coast of the United States, to announce that she had watched Step Up 4 and that it was… relevant to my interests (read: contains salsa).
My first reaction?
No seriously. Not another dance movie?!?!
Contrary to what one would think, given how much I’m into dancing, I feel like this whole dance movie thing is seriously overdone. Even Lord of the Rings only had three in a series. Do we really need a fourth Step Up movie when the story probably will be pretty much the same? Classically trained, picture perfect dance princess meets roughed up street boy and finds love and the elusive personality lacking in her otherwise perfect technique. Industry standard. Normally, this cookie cutter plot is accompanied by some degree of sub-par acting and every opportunity to include dancing in the most romanticized and unrealistic of fantasy scenarios. Anyone who thinks that meeting a boy will turn you into a dance demon needs a bit of a reality check.
But ok – I suspended my disbelief for a while. I didn’t have too much of a choice seeing as how my boyfriend is the biggest Kathryn McCormick fanboy out there. Plus, even my pro-golfing sister, who doesn’t have a single dancing bone in her body and has despite my best efforts, refused to dance her entire life except on special occassions that involve large volumes of hard liquor and a certain Thai disco called Escobar, paid money to watch it. She even gave me a quick review of the salsa segment, which I of course had to screencap for posterity:
Gotta love her for it. Technically, she wasn’t wrong – they DID start on one before whipping out tricks that pretty much removed all timing whatsoever. Bless the girl. She makes me so proud sometimes.
Anyway, the movie was… nothing I didn’t expect I guess. I must give the writers props for coming up with an excuse to legitimately make the dance sequences even more dramatic and unrealistic than ever before. The sequences in the museum were pretty epic, and the dancers were all strong. But alas, an amazing dancer does not a good actress make. Add that to the classic storyline that struck again, and prize lines such as “Thanks, I really appreciate your help.” – uttered to a dance partner and a lover mind you, just killed it.
In short, I’d say that everyone from SYTYCD should just stay true to dance and stick to what they do best – performing for a live audience and touching people that way, instead of trying to make it big on the silver screen.
