**1/2 out of 5

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2003)

Saying that this film is a musical would be like saying Fight Club was a kung fu flick. When this film first hit the street I didn't think there would be anyway that it could be taken seriously. But it became a huge surprise hit and raked in big bucks at the box office. So now, years after its release I decided to see what all the fuss was about, I didn't find much. We open the film with a truly heart-breaking scene of Sara riding on a train while she flashes back to her mom's death when driving to her ballet addition. This scene hit me hard. It was very sad but yet had a sense of reality in it that couldn't be ignored. The rest was downhill from there. Sara then moves in with her dad. He lives in a run down neighbourhood full of sex, drugs and violence. I guess you could say it came from a scene right out of Boyz N' the Hood (easily the most powerful blacksplotion film ever made). This helps to unfold the rest of the film. If you think I have short changed you on the plot description I will certainly agree that I have. You may be interested in what happens to here once she moves, what kind of troubles does she meet up with along the way and mostly what does any of this have to do with dancing? I would love to answer all those questions in this review but that would be impossible. You see after that opening scene this film takes so many different turns and plot twists that it is almost impossible to follow and even harder to care about. There is something new presented in every scene and dropped just a quickly in the next. I criticized 8 Mile for doing this as well but the difference is that 8 Mile stayed to one basic story, it just didn't developed anything within the context of that story to be interesting. This film jumps all over the place and instead of having one solid message it tries to preach about to many different things. We hear about the bad relationship between a father, the shattered dreams, the blaming of ones self for the death of a loved one, teen parenting, reaching out to achieve your goals, not caring about what other people think about you, racial barriers and a message about gang violence. Still wondering what all this has to do with dancing? The answer is nothing. The dancing is only thrown in as a way to disguise the fact that this film never had a clue where it is going and has even less of one about where it will end up. Filmmakers knew this film was geared toward teenagers so it seems like all they are doing is throwing a story about dancing to cover up the fact that this film does not flow together at all. The best example is when Sara first sees Derek she thinks he is a complete jerk. The next time we see the two on screen together they have instantly fallen in love with each other. We are given no explanation as to their feeling for each other or how they grew to be this way, it just simple happened. Almost all the other subject matter presented follows this same pattern. But the film does work in talking about the racial barriers between blacks and whites. Even though the love story between Sara and Derek didn't do a thing for the film it was nice to see that it wasn't looked on as a conventional relationship and that a lot of people do look down on these types of things. Also the messages about violence and knowing when to walk away were very effective for me, the problem is that they weren't dealt upon enough or didn't fit into the story. If films makers wanted to make a film about violence they should have made one about violence and stick to that. There are so many things going on in here I found myself more interesting in what was going on in the world around them than the actual characters themselves. In fact I didn't feel for any characters in this film at all. Watching the characters in this film is like watching a horror film like the Candayman and seeing that very same hook handed killer in a slapstick comedy. Different characters are needed to suit different environments but. Sara and Derek always seem to be at the heart of everything that is going on. Their moods never change with the flow of the film. It seemed that whenever they would have a romantic moment the film would instantly switch into suspense mode but the audience is still left with the feeling of romance. Don't get me wrong, the acting is not bad. Julia Stiles is a very talented young actress who I can see big things for in the future. He holds this whole film together because she allows her emotions to change freely from scene to scene and is able to show all the pain she is going through but also allows us to get into the lighter side of her life. Sean Patrick Thomas on the other had is not suited for this role. The whole time I was watching him I could only think of how much this film could have benefited if that part was given to someone like Mekhi Phifer. Hey if he could keep 8 Mile from falling apart I'm sure he could do the same for this film. Another thing that bothers me about this film is its tag line " The Only Person You Need To Be Is Yourself." Nowhere in the film is that presented at all. Sara goes into her new environment as a smart intelligent type. She then conforms to the ways of her black friends in order for her to be accepted. The character we see at the start of this film is not the same one we see at the end and that bothered me, especially considering all the film trailers depicted a girl having to face her past in order to become her present. Maybe that is talked about in the film, and maybe teen girls will be able to buy into that. But after seeing plot hole after plot hole I found that message nowhere within the film (I guess whoever was in charge of marketing did a good job, it must have been the same people who did it for 8 Mile). I am yet again going to compare this film to 8 Mile because I feel both are sending out terrible messages. Both seem to be saying that in order to be excepted by the public you have to be someone/something that you aren't. This is most notable in the last scene (the dance audition) but I am not going to give the ending away so you're going to have to figure that one out yourself. It is nice to see that MTV is trying to say something with the films they put out. I don't know about anyone else but I didn't find any deep, life changing messages in Joe's Apartment or Dead Man on Campus, but they are going about it totally wrong. They have tried to put a message from a film like Boyz... into a film that will be marketable to teens. Maybe if MTV were more worried about what is being into the film and not how they will sell it we may have had a winner on our hands, but because of its candy coated theories and watered down statements it doesn't come close to hitting the mark.