Dance Flick
Dance Flick (2009)
★★ / ★★★★
Damien Dante Wayans directed this parody about a girl (Shoshana Bush) who moves to the city with her father after her mother dies on the way to her dance audition. With the help of a friend (Essence Atkins), she’s able to meet others, open up a little more and fall for a guy (Damon Wayans Jr.). If that sounds familiar, that’s because that’s pretty much what “Save the Last Dance” was about. But this movie takes it a bit further by adding in “Step Up,” “Step Up 2 the Streets,” “High School Musical,” and “Hairspray” into the mix with occassional popular references to icons such as Britney Spears, Halle Berry, and the like. As accessible as those references were, I liked that Wayans added some less popular jokes such as from movies like “Black Snake Moan.” As idiotic as this movie was, I somewhat enjoyed it because I saw it when I was in the mood for watching something where I don’t have to think. I also liked the fact that it showed some vignettes where it revealed the stupidity of the plot or meaningful of certain dance movies. For instance, in “Step Up 2 the Streets,” people constantly had to fight for “respect” (whatever that means) instead of focusing on issues that would most likely impact their futures like education and working toward achieving something most people would assume to be impossible. This movie’s ability to bluntly present issues like that made me like it because I hardly think fighting for so-called respect should be the main drive of young people today. Still, the movie consistently lost focus such as whenever it would refer to something ridiculous like “Twilight.” In my opinion, if such in-your-face spoof pictures should stay in their own universe. That glaring decision to show something so out of the blue was not only unfunny, it also reflects desperation. “Dance Flick” could have been so much more fun if it had its act together. After all, there are a lot of dance movies out there to make fun of because they take themselves too far. The difference between those and this movie is that “Dance Flick” knows it’s being ridiculous.
