Review: Step Up 2 The Streets [Movies]
Posted by LD in crap crap crap, LD
After hearing E rave about Step Up 2 The Streets for months now, I was excited to see the film added to Netflix's growing "Watch It Now" library. Here are the many reasons that this film sucks:
1) For a movie based on awesome dancers, a lot of the dancing kind of sucks. The lead actress is clearly a decent dancer, but is completely out of her depth among the professionals that make up the rest of the cast. The best example of the poor dancing is the mystifying opening scene, in which the allegedly great 410 Crew dances awkwardly for about one minute in a Baltimore Metro car. The entire sequence is stilted, awkwardly shot, and bereft of anything breathtaking. Of course, it was only one minute long, which leads me to my next complaint...
2) The movie takes place on an alternate Earth in which dancing is both terrifying and illegal. The 410 crew is chased out of the subway car by the police, and their exploits are the lead story on the news that night, where it is pointed out that their utterly nonviolent dancing exploits have been terrifying the city for weeks. This is happening in BALTIMORE, a city occasionally referred to as Bodymore, Murdaland.
It's not just this dancing that's illegal. The final dance competition, called The Streets because the writers of the film wear helmets and bibs at all times, is also apparently illegal, although no reason is given why a dance competition would be illegal.
3) I'm glad to see a movie that's unafraid to show that privileged white kids from the suburbs can defeat a rag-tag group of self-taught kids who didn't have all the advantages.
4) The acting and dialogue. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Watch 5 minutes of the movie and you'll see what I mean. You've never seen people work harder to sound credibly "street" while simultaneously failing so hard. If you didn't know this was a serious movie, you'd swear it was called "Dance Movie".
5) The biggest flaw in the entire film is that none of the characters ever seem to act in a remotely human manner. You hear over and over and over again about how the main character is just TOO REBELLIOUS TO CONTROL. The extent of her rebellion? Well, she does goof off a bit in one of her classes one time. Outside of that, we never see her do anything wrong, but the rest of the cast treats her like a rabid dog, ready to pounce at any time. I'd love to spend more time listing more examples, but it's just not worth it. This movie sucks. It grates on your ears and your eyes for its entire, interminable running time.
The worst part of the whole thing is that the movie teases with The JabbaWockeeZ, who are significantly more interesting that anything that's actually part of the plot:
