Step Down

Rating: 1/10 (12 November 2009)

Step Up might be described as 'Saturday Night Fever' meets 'Take The Lead' meets '8 Mile' meets 'You Got Served' meets 'Good Will Hunting' meets 'Dirty Dancing' meets 'Fame'; there's more meets here than a well-laden charcuterie platter. The end result, however, is likely to leave one ravenous for something more substantial.
Ghetto kid Tyler meets privileged ballerina Nora at Maryland School of the Arts, Baltimore. (Incidentally, an attempt has been made to prettify Baltimore, heroin capital of the States. You won't find drug dealers loitering on corners in Step Up, just fresh-faced dancers and basketball players. Nevertheless, the filmmakers can't mask that drab, industrial backdrop).
Nora doesn't immediately warm to Tyler; she's already got a boyfriend, a dorkish Justin Timberlake wannabe with Daniel Beddingfield stylings. Oh, and the fact that Tyler's working there as a janitor as part of his community service for vandalising the school. (Good thinking - give the guy who trashed it the virtual run of the place. And what happened to the regular janitor he replaced? Was he paid off? Did he go quietly?) Tyler's smitten when he sees Nora dancing, his reptilian eyes plucking the leotard off her lithe little frame. Later, he catches her studying him from an upper storey window as he backflips outside college for his black pals Mac and Skinny.
In the first of many plot contrivances Nora's dance partner breaks his leg - "But don't worry, you can find someone else to rehearse with". Whoever could that be? Initially, Nora's suspicious Tyler's using her to "get out of cleaning windows" but is soon convinced by his raw talent. (Says who His "street" moves seem utterly artless). Nora's trapped, too. If she fails to get a job in the performing arts after her showcase, her snooty mum (her status indicated by her long dinner table) will pack her off to Cornel. Soon, Tyler and Nora are exchanging sob stories by the harbour, which Tyler exclaims has an amazing view (it doesn't).
They indulge in choreographed 'spontaneous' dance routines down the local club - a club filled with bright young things singing and dancing all night long (Baltimore, there), as Nora incorporates Tyler's hip-hop attitude into her "stiff and boring" repertoire. "I think this is very risky, Nora," says principal Gordon (Rachel Griffiths, who can't be doing this for love), and who obviously recognises a genre convention when she sees one, hurtling down the street like an out-of-control tram.
Nora dumps her boyfriend after he gets signed and he dumps his black musical partner Miles in turn. He tells a disgusted Nora of Tyler, "Just remember, that loser's heading nowhere fast and you know it." Yes, he actually says that. You can write the rest yourself, but don't forget to add the climactic showcase, a hip-hop-flavoured set-piece infused with classical noodlings.
You might want to include a crusty old janitor, nursing a broken-heart who takes Tyler under his wing and gleefully punches the air from the gods at the end. Or a revelation that principal Gordon once loved a boy from the wrong side of town who took a heroin overdose. None of this is actually in the plot, but you might find it passes the time to stir in some genre conventions of your own. However, you might balk at making one of the villains of the piece an English Jamie Cullum lookalike called Colin, as this one does.
There is hardly a single second of Step Up that has not been 'sampled' from another movie. The film's shadowy figure Omar (played by Heavy D) is a car-breaker, and it's entirely apposite; this is a movie welded together from pilfered parts. Omar also endorses the film's central contrivance, when inverted snob and unrepentant wastrel Mac expresses surprise that Miles is an art student (why? Because Miles is black? Have you seen how he dresses? In tweeds and a satchel?). "What the hell's an art student supposed to look like?" admonishes Omar. "Miles Davis, Mobb Deep - those cats went to art school too!" No, despite his tweeds, Miles is automatically accepted into the gang as he's got a G4 in his satchel, programmed with naff R 'n' B.
The whole point of Step Up is about going after what you want, as exemplified by principal Gordon's heavy-handed speech (a lift from Fame) to an understandably bemused Tyler, who just popped in to wipe the office shelves. However, there's so little genuine pathos and total lack of chemistry between the leads that everyone involved does indeed look like an unconscionable user; even Tyler wants to use the showcase as his ticket into art school.
Much of this is down to the vastly contracted nature of the screenplay. As if correctly ashamed of itself, this is a film that can't wait to end, as evinced by a rushed funeral scene (Skinny buys the farm, prompting Mac to re-evaluate his own future) and Nora's mother's sudden and inexplicable change of heart concerning her daughter's future. The best and sweetest scene in the movie - Tyler exchanging dance moves with his kid sister in his backyard - works so well because it has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, entirely lacking its cynicism and cliché-studded dialogue. But it's all too brief.
Just once, it would be great to discover a film for 13-year-old girls that isn't the equivalent of a cellophane-wrapped lunchable; that doesn't patronise them or treat them like idiots; something that shakes them up a bit, makes them think. Step Up is so turgidly unoriginal it's tempting to subvert it every inch of the way; cut the sound, edit it, add a voice-over. Make principal Gordon a predatory power lesbian. Let Nora get mixed up with a bunch of murderous Knights Templars. Have Tyler run off with Nora's mum and spawn conjoined twins who grow up to be amazing tap-dancers. Just anything but this utter rubbish.