The current glut of
dance-happy trifles is introducing a new generation to the magic of dance-movie
clichés. Dance fans too young to remember Grease, let alone the heyday of
the Freed Unit, are learning that sometimes a talented young dancer is forced
to choose between the irresistible pull of clandestine street dancing and the
highbrow respectability of classic dance, only to learn that the two have more
in common than folks on either side are willing to admit. They're also learning
that interpersonal conflicts are sometimes so explosive that they can only be
resolved via a climactic dance-off, and that nothing bonds a dance troupe
together like a montage sequence. Lastly, they're learning that dance movies
often put a great deal of thought into their dance sequences, and very little
thought into everything else.
Step Up 2 The Streets is a supremely lazy
teacher of the above lessons, stumbling gracelessly from point A to point B and
hitting all the expected notes in the process. Briana Evigan stars as a dancer
who runs into trouble when her outlaw dance crew ends up on the news. Evigan
ends up matriculating at the Maryland School Of The Arts, where hoity-toity
types turn up their nose at her raw skillz and untamed exuberance. Robert
Hoffman, who appears to have been cloned from the DNA of Jay Mohr and Chris
Klein, co-stars as Evigan's love interest, the brother of the school's uptight
headmaster, and a talented dancer in his own right. After Evigan is kicked out
of her old crew for getting above her raisin', she and Hoffman transform a
loose confederacy of outlaws and misfits into a lean, mean dancing machine in
time for the big dance-off.
Streets' best sequences combine
prankish humor with irresistible rhythm, as when Evigan's old crew transforms a
subway car into an impromptu venue for guerrilla street theater. A climactic
dance number where Evigan and friends risk pneumonia dancing in the pounding
rain is a showstopper, but the non-dance elements feel like an afterthought.
The central romance is terminally bland, while Evigan's woozy family melodrama
seems borrowed from countless superior dance movies. For teenyboppers blissfully
ignorant of Flashdance, Fame, or the Shabba Doo oeuvre, Streets might seem funky-fresh.
For everyone else, it's a hoary rerun.