Make the world a better place with dancing?

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2004)

Review for non-dancers
Silly formulaic rubbish - dance obsessed teen who has a fairly hollow life (outside of her desire to dance and be nice to kids) goes through predictable scenarios in her Flashdance/Save-The-Last-Dance-style 'rise to success'. She's a girl from the Bronx who makes good. About as original as a woolworths cover album, but maybe kinda nice as a nice, saccharine-coated hip-hop eulogy firmly aimed at the teen market, as long as you can accept its emptiness without wanting anything more.

Review for dancers
From the first few minutes of this movie, the dancing and music starts pumping and hardly lets up till the end. Most dance movies have a fluffy story interspersed with some cool dancing, one or two have a fluffy story with overly drawn-out dancing, whereas this one hangs on a feelgood story that requires large amounts of snappy dancing in almost every scene.
You know that emotion when you see a dancer spin, and from the flick of her hands and hair, sparks fly off and light up the room. Her enthusiasm is so high that just watching her makes you want to give up that day job and do anything that is vaguely music/dance/keep-fit related. You want to just let the light shine out of you every time you dance - for the thrill of it, for the joy it can bring to others, as an affirmation perhaps of life itself.
Ballet-trained Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba) works hard just so she can dance - whether it's coaching local kids at hip-hop or bartending in a nightclub so she can dance for free after her shift. Her aim is to break into MTV-style dance videos.
(plot spoilers - next para only - short synopsis)
When she eventually gets the break, she not only dances but starts producing fabulous choreography for Missy Elliott style numbers for television. The big boss drunkenly tries to get her to sleep with him - and chucks her out when she refuses. She wants to found a dance school for the kids in the Bronx but with her wages cut she has to perform a benefit dance show to raise the cash. The video producer begs her to go back when the recording artists start demanding her but she sticks to her principles. The benefit fund-raiser dance is success, her parents are proud of her, former competitors and worried friends all bond with her, and the kids on the block get their dance school which keeps them off the street life of petty crime.
Admittedly if you don't like hip-hop / streetdance / breakdance the film may do nothing for you. If you do, but only dance partner dance, you may feel inspired or even take some of the movements, and practice them to add to your current dance moves. There's plenty of funky moves and some cool choreography.
The lead character's humanitarian spirit also brings out one of the highest aims of dancing - to make the world a better place in some small way. Dance should not be divisive - it might be the highest aspiration of the free spirit to communicate joy and bring others together using a language beyond words, beyond social class, age, gender or other things that divide people. Looking at it like this, for those who choose to do so, it gives some meaning to our 'obsession' with dance.
I notice hip-hop is being increasingly taught  not an easy dance but fabulous for adding those split timing add-ons. It's also often taught as a work out (check out ads for streetdance'). Timing is tight  fashion is motion  movement is meaning  communication is flow  sex is attitude  feel the rush 
Or just go and see Honey . . .