188, StreetDance 2

You can tell its half term as being dragged along to this was definitely not one of my 'to-do's' for the few days off I have over the Easter Break but although my daughter has spoken of nothing but this movie for the past 6 months it was only fair to saddle up and head down to the multiplex to make all her dreams come true.

Secretly, I have to admit I was kind of looking forward to it myself (a little bit), there is no denying that the quality of top end dance acts on our TV screens nowadays in shows such as America's & Britain's got Talent etc have raised the barr and with a pumping soundtrack and supposedly the worlds elite dance crews on the big screen whats not to enjoy?

This blog will be broken down into three sections.  firstly the Dancing, then the acting and to end, the finale.  Each worthy of its own little piece of 'page time' but all for very different reasons.  If I could sum this movie up in three words it would be Dreadful, Awesome and Disappointing.  But what matches with what.

Well lets start with the Dreadful.  Sorry, but the acting and script in this was truly shocking.  I know its going to be almost impossible to train some of the Hollywood elite to dance to this standard overnight which is why the cast are mainly made up of epic street dancers (barring Tom Conti) which sadly left a majority of the characters empty, wooden and down right boring to watch and listen too when they weren't 'busing a move'.  George Sampson just doesn't cut it on the big screen and the plank that played the lead role 'Ash' has less emotion than a chicken drumstick. 

The rest of the 'Crew' were just there for looks and moves although to be fair to them, they each play their 'stereotypical' dance roles to perfection.  Luckily though there is somebody who actually can act and reprising a role that only really can be compared to a previous performance in Shirley Valentine, Tom Conti ads a refreshing breath of thespian air to proceedings and manages to salvage a movie out of this rather than it just playing out like an elongated dance-off.

Moving swiftly onto the Awesome.  Well, no surprise here but its the dancing.  You will be hard pushed to find a better choreographed 90 minutes of screen time, ever.  Individually each have their own styles and stories and the idea of bringing together a crew of individuals and making it work as a tight team means we have some pretty huge ego's all battling for the spotlight but in each its cool headed Ash and to the latter of the movie, Eva who bring it all together in a seamless combination of Street & Latin that throughout the movie is truly inspiring.  The Music helps with some brilliant remixes of a culmination of recent chart hits and it wont be long before you are toe-tapping your way through practise session & dance battles which luckily happen frequent and often which is a good things due to acting being so terrible.

Sadly, I have to end of the disappointing.  The climax battle in Paris where our crew of individual misfits square off against the "Champs" just seems to lack any form of quality.  Don't get me wrong, its good but it just seems to be way off par compared to the practises and underground comps completed to get them to that stage.  I'm no dance champ but even I was well prepared for something breathtaking towards the end and it just never came - it actually made me wish I'd paid more attention at the frequent interludes throughout the movie as they definitely captured the class you'd hope for when watching a movie about street dancers.

If you have kiddie Cheerleaders or budding Street Dancers in your brood there is no denying they will love it.  In fact, most kids under 13 will think it could be the best movie ever but look a little deeper and it misses a fair few boxes.