Skip this and just rent "Save the Last Dance"

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2007)

Please do not think for a moment that I feel "Save the Last Dance" is some cinematic epitome of greatness, because it isn't. What is it, however, is a film that was pretty useless all around, but had enough good "stuff" in it to make it very entertaining.
"Step Up" not only lacked all that "stuff," but the dancing was horrible too! Last time I checked, if a movie is going to be about dance, the dancing part SHOULD be impressive, no? I am not one to diss films for being formulaic or overly contrived, as I love many movies which are just that, but if you are not going to add anything NEW to a medium, it should at least be done well.
This film is almost like a terrible remake of "Save the Last Dance" gone wrong. The story was completely ridiculous, if not totally implausible. The dance sequences were boring and uninspired, like a bad week on "So You Think You Can Dance." Even the music was predominantly made up of really horrible, generic RnB. They hit on way too many clichés (including black man with gun, non-understanding parent, overworked-absent mom) and not once in this film would anyone begin to care about these stupid people so when there is the obligatory dramatic death of a young one, all it does is make you roll your eyes at how mundane every aspect of this movie is. Even the editing was terrible with so many bad cuts and continuity problems, I wondered if the director was even awake sometimes.
Channing Tatum stars and I was hoping to see him show some acting chops, but all he did was prove he can play a white boy wannabe reallybadly. And he's not that great of a dancer. There is no doubt that the ex-Abercrombie model is gorgeous, but even that wasn't enough to really make this movie worth sitting through. If he is going to have any future, he's going to have to stop appearing in crap films like this and "She's the Man," learn to act and not think that his perfectly sculpted face is going to get him anything more than a few more fluffy film roles until he fades away and regrets giving up modeling.