Good dancing in otherwise flat and atrocious attempt at entertainment

Rating: 3/10 (17 May 2009)

Andie (Evigan) joins a highly sophisticated school and once entered in an extremely difficult dance class, her friends and dance group the 410 turn their back on her.
Though labelled as Step Up 2, this 2007 music drama is not a direct sequel to the previous fan winning picture. Having never seen the original, comparisons will be short here but in full honesty, I flicked this film on for a light hearted viewing knowing full well it was classed as a casual flick and starring some attractive young stars with some modern day hit singles, it was sure to be popcorn entertainment, but no.
If you have seen the trailer for this Jon Chu picture you will have noticed some eccentric dance moves, some visible drama and heard Flo Rida's previous smash Low. All fine elements combining for a good trailer and promising picture but don't let this take you for granted.
Step Up 2 is a film made purely for profit. There is no point, there is no deep meaning, and sadly there is hardly entertainment to speak of. Encoded with chart singles and upcoming stars, it is a vehicle forward for the cast and crew.
Starting off with a bizarre dance battle and we see sullen central character Briana Evigan lose a dance battle and is forced to go to school and she is instantly an outcast who brings her own flair and instantly likes the hottest most talented guy and blah, blah, blah. It's your typical story with modern music and stereotype gloss over, a film for "the hood" or "the chavs" was an accurate review given by the critics, which is reasonable enough.
There is too much slang to make out what was proper English, the clothes are all hoodies and awful tracksuits aimed to represent the difficult culture when all it does is make the characters look baggy and scruffy rather than emotionally strained as the shabby script seems to depict them.
The acting is terrible, complete stone faced twitter that expresses little emotion. Adam G Sevani brings the odd spark as appropriately named Moose but the leads are a very basic form of Romeo and Juliet, who obviously don't know it.
If there is one reason to watch this, it is the dancing. When looking at classic music dramas such as Saturday Night Fever we see an era of classic and surprise. Here the dancing justifies the modern culture, break dancing away from the normality and past into a brand new phase of life. The choreography is superb and the rain dance sequence, though ruined by the most ridiculous inspirational speech ever to grace cinema, is otherwise a shocking surprise to this otherwise faulty and flat picture.