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Shelf Beauties |
Step Up Just step up, walk out of
the theater and don’t look back. Channing Tatum is Tyler Gage
– a tough kid from the mean streets of Once at the school, Tyler
starts to see the students pursuing their dreams (dreams he secretly
harbors,
but he doesn’t think he can make it because the world is
unfair to him), and
focuses most of his attention (and hormones) on talented ballerina,
Nora (Jenna
Dewan) - who is working on her performance piece for the
school’s showcase,
which could lead to a career in dancing, or it might be her final
curtain
call. Of course,
her partner has to back
out, and since, at an Arts school with a major dance concentration and
plenty
of other dancers, she can’t find another good partner, Nora
teams up with Will Nora get her big
break? Can Tyler
STEP UP and work hard
without giving up for the first time in his life?
I knew I was watching
something special when the audience broke out into mock applause. They do so because
director Anne Fletcher and
writers Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg fill Step Up
with every cliché
possible from the romance between kids from opposite sides of the
tracks to the
street thug with a heart of gold who just needs the right inspiration
to turn
his life around to the moment we have to wonder if all of their dreams
are
going to die because the odds are against them.
Adler and Rosenberg write on
autopilot with extremely predictable dialogue, but I have seen worse. Anyway, we know the
dialogue is not why
anyone is going to see this movie.
Fletcher fills the movie with montage after montage
so we can see the kids
dance, jump, spin, flail and otherwise move their bodies in odd
contortions
none of us over the age of 25 should ever try.
I even think someone got served somewhere in there. Of course, I would have
added a few more
montages if I had to rely on Tatum and Dewan to carry the movie. Tatum is trying way too hard
to be tough, but looks like the second coming of Jack Nicholson next to
Dewan,
whose acting style is stiffer than Chuck Norris’s six pack
abs. She has no
real emotion and might as well pout
like a 6-year old when things don’t go Nora’s way. However, her lack of
dancing skill is the
worst part of her portrayal of a DANCER!
Sadly, she really is a professional dancer, which
can excuse the lack of
acting skills, but you think she might have worked a little harder on
the dance
stuff to showcase what is supposed to be her biggest skill. Then, you have to shed a
tear or two for Rachel Griffiths, who plays the school’s
director, only named
as Director Gordon, who looks upon this new dance style with amused
bewilderment figuring the kids are alright, while secretly thinking
about how
far she has fallen to go from an Emmy-nominated TV show like Six Feet
Under to
playing the stodgy adult in a teensploitation film. What, no offers to
appear
in a horror movie? She’s
too good and
too beautiful to be wasted in something like this.
Someone please offer her a Broadway play,
STAT!
In
a week when 2 other major films were not shown to critics (Zoom and Pulse),
and
a month when several more will take the cowardly way out, I feel like I
owe Step Up 1 Waffle
out of pity because, well, the camera was in focus most of the
time, and the film will appeal to someone, probably a bunch of girls 13
– 17
years old and Channing Tatum’s mother.
Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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