Step Up: Movie Review, DVD Review (2007)

9/14/2007 Posted by Admin

Step off

(Originally published 2006)

Directed by Anne Fletcher; written by Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg, 98 minutes, rated PG-13.

Stripped of surprises and coasting on cliches, the new Anne Fletcher movie, "Step Up," pins much of its hopes on its two leads--former model Channing Tatum, whose Tyler Gage is a Baltimore tough with a hard-knock, hip-hop life, and Jenna Dewan, whose Nora is a well-to-do dancer finishing her senior year at the Maryland School for the Arts.

Essentially, it's up to these two to generate whatever interest and tension the movie has, which isn’t much; Fletcher presses each actor with the burden of making something out of nothing. Assisting her in that task is Duane Adler (“Save the Last Dance”) and Melissa Rosenberg, whose script is so rote, it's difficult not to watch this movie wondering how a film about taking risks could be so unwilling to take a few of its own.

But it doesn’t.

The movie begins with Tyler and his posse--homeboy Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and Mac's younger brother, Skinny (De’Shawn Washington)--spending their days shooting hoops and getting into trouble, while at night they hit the clubs, where Tyler reveals on the dance floor that he can crunk with the best of them.

It’s during one of their wayward nights on the town that the trio break into the arts school. There, they half-heartedly trash a classroom before Tyler is caught and sentenced to 200 hours of community service. He will become a janitor at the school, mopping floors and scrubbing toilets in an effort to right his wrongs.

Enter Nora, who is so focused on succeeding at her upcoming senior showcase, that she’s stunned--stunned!--when her dance partner hurts his ankle in a dance misstep and is presumably out of commission. Now what is Nora to do? Who is going to step up to the plate at the last moment to help her out? Could it be that it's Tyler, the smoldering new janitor with the fly bod, low self-esteem and hot parking-lot dance moves? Quicker than you can cinch a ballerina into a tutu, that's just the case, with Nora and Tyler learning each other's moves before bringing a mix of them onto the stage.

Swirling around them are a haze of restless subplots. There’s Nora’s rigid mother, Kathleen (Deirdre Lovejoy), who would prefer that her daughter go to an Ivy League school rather than risk a career path that could lead to, say, a smoky room and a cold pole. There’s the school's tense headmistress (Rachel Griffiths, awful), who may or may not let Tyler in as a full student. And there are of course the personal hardships Tyler and Nora must work through if they are to become what they're destined to become--a couple.

For the movie--and audiences--the good news is that both Tatum and Dewan are just enough to best the bum script. They are likeable, their dance talent is undeniable, and their modest chemistry goes some way in lifting the movie above the mediocrity it otherwise courts.

Grade: C+

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