How
She Move
Beating up on How She Move is
like criticizing a
5-year old who just made a Mother’s Day card for his mommy.
It might not be the most professional looking product, but you
can’t doubt the good intensions.
Rutina Wesley stars as Raya – a high school girl whose dreams
seem to be falling apart all around her. Raya’s family
doesn’t have the money to pay her tuition to a swanky private
school after her older sister becomes addicted to drugs and dies, so
the young lady desperately is seeking some way to get back on track.
Raya’s best hope is to win a scholarship, and gain
re-admittance in the next year, so she starts to study day and night to
ace the exam. However, she is being drawn back into the community
around her, the same community that destroyed her sister, as a rivalry
breaks out between Raya and mean girl Michelle (Tre Armstrong), and an
old friend, Bishop (Dwain Murphy), wants her to get back into step
dancing competition.
Can Raya
get the scholarship? Will she learn something more along the way?
How She Move is an after school
special complete with kids learning not
to judge each other, young people using their talent to overcome bad
circumstances, second chances, the big dance competition and someone
getting
served (which is better than someone getting shot).
Director
Ian Iqbal Rashid’s biggest challenge is to keep the camera
steady and capture the dancing, which is the movie’s
highlight, but the script doesn’t call for much more.
Writer Annmarie Morais provides a basic story with twists and turns you
can predict as soon as each character walks onto the screen. You can
see the love story beginning as soon as Bishop takes one look at Raya.
You know Raya and Michelle are going to get stuck together somehow once
they have their big dance off, which substitutes for fisticuffs. Plus,
every acting performance is slightly below average, stiff and never
hits the right tone.
However, How She Move has positive messages about
believing in
yourself, finding more than one way to achieve a goal, trusting in
others, solving problems with methods other than violence, giving
people a chance to do the right thing and more, all of which are
messages people need to hear these days. Morais has her heart in the
right place with this story and these ideals, but the execution fails.
How She Move is rated PG-13 for
some drug content, suggestive material and language
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