Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The moviehouses across America have been recently showing the provacative new dance movie entitled "Step Up." I had the pleasure of viewing this film last night and I found the results were quite prototypical of the recent new wave of "Dance Flicks Staring White People" or DFSW. Other movies in the esteemed DFSW cannon include "Honey," "Save the Last Dance," et. al. These flicks are basically paint-by-numbers: guy from the wrong side of the tracks is actually a dancer (homo?), girl with the upright upbringing needs a dance partner, they butt heads, eventually fall in love and bust-dat-ass on the dance floor! Insert a montage here, a sidekick there, a disproving parent here, a sprinkle of racial tension, urban blight thrown in and voila--box office gold. Step Up holds down all of these aspects quite well--in an MD (OLD LINE STATE WHAT!) setting no less--ending predictably and crowd-pleasing-ly. The film stars the white dude from Coach Carter, ne Channing Tatum, a dude with two preppy white first names and one mean WWA (Wigger With an Attitude) disposition. The former model (aren't they all) ice grills throughout, and slinks his rather large frame into pop-lock routines with male-stripper like dexterity (this is getting gayer by the word). Anyways, WWA gets busted for being a badass and is relegated to working community service at the prestigious Maryland Art School in the Ghetto, where dudes in corn-rows play the violin and other youth stereotypes paint and otherwise express their inner specialness. Aww, sounds like the perfect place for WWA to express his lock-pops, slide in between the girls legs moves and bad dialouge reading, right!? You guessed it. He eventually hooks up with butta-faced dance major (aren't they all?) and they end up meshing his too-hood dances with her bare-foot-gay stylings to create THE PERFECT DANCE ROUTINE.
So blah blah blah about the plot, lets get to the analysis. WWA stumbles upon pretty much all of his lines (upon hearing about the butta-faced chick's dad he succinctly adds, "Sounds like a cool dude." HOOD!), and forces out a few hilarious tears during an unnecessary and predictable death scene. Mario brings his enormous nostrils to the set to play the talented producer-songwriter-Diddy whose secret genius comes to the forefront with impromptu hot beat sessions. (WTF @ these jams, dude just carries his G4 all over hood-ass bmore so he can plug up and hold down a concert!?! With choreographed dance routines no less!?!? I think Hollywood is convinced we are retarded.) Mario's performance is predictably laughable, as his pointy-ass dome barely registers any of the emotion he put forth in the "Let me Love you" video. He fails to fill Tyrese's wife beater here. Special props go to Ms. Drew Sidora, the lovely side-chick who looks simply delectible, completely out-shining her butta-faced compadre, who really didn't impress me (where's Allison from So You Think You Can Dance when you need her? BTW: Ryan (the gay black balet dude) from SYTYCD appears in the intro. And BBTW--speaking of reality television, Ashlee Simpson's dickhead boyfriend from the first season is also in this, as a dickhead boyfriend no less.
Now that i have written close to 500 of the gayest words to ever be placed in a blog, I wanted to relay that the reason this movie didn't put me to sleep was the inauspicious cameo of Frank-"TOUCHDOWN WASHINGTON REDSKINS"-Herzog as a judge. The man's voice triggers tear-ducts in me (watching the '87 Doug Williams Super Bowl highlight makes me cry EVERY DAMN TIME), and seeing him get his due on the big screen ruled, especially after he was rather unceremoniously dumped in favor of Larry Michael (granted, Frank was botching a lot of names and the booth really only had room for two geriatrics).
Step Up: ** (an extra star for including Frank)
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WTF @ these jams, dude just carries his G4 all over hood-ass bmore so he can plug up and hold down a concert!?!
HAHA Damn dude I was laughing at every other sentence!
why did you even go see this "GAY" movie?