Step
Up 2 The Streets
For 13-year olds who haven’t seen too
many movies in their lives, and the males among them who will be stoked
to see star Briana Evigan refuse to put on any type of shirt that
covers her belly button (like a female Matthew
McConaughey) Step Up 2 The Streets
will be their
call to rebellion. For the rest of us, we have been there and done
that.
Set in Baltimore, Evigan stars as Andie – a troubled teen
whose mother passed away, but she has found a strong bond with her
fellow dance crew members. However, she often skips school,
participates in illegal behavior and stays out to all hours of the
night, so her guardian, Sarah (Sonja Sohn), has decided to send Andie
off to her Aunt’s house in Texas. It looks like all hope is
lost until neighborhood reformed bad boy, and star of Step Up,
Tyler
Gage (Channing Tatum), convinces Sarah to give Andie a second chance if
she starts directing her love of dancing into positive projects like
the Maryland School for the Arts.
 Will
Andie be able to fit in with the Arts school crowd and its sometimes
stuffy professors? Can she stay true to her dance crew and her own love
of step dancing?
At one point in the movie, an announcer proclaims to the world how this
is not High School Musical, which is a shame since High
School Musical
is interesting. You might as well call this movie How She Move
Again or You
Got
Served As Well, since the main attraction, and only
attraction,
is the fantastic step dancing. Heck, you could even call it Rebel
Without a Cause 2 since it plays on all of those themes again
and
again, but not as well as you have seen in other movies.
While nothing in Step Up 2 The Streets is
completely offensive
(although, one Asian character borders on vicious stereotype which
makes the portrayal of Asians in porn movies more realistic and
acceptable than this one), it’s not very original or well
written either. Writers Toni Ann Johnson and Karen Barna provide some
dialogue and reactions so predictable and moronic you will laugh more
than you did if you saw Meet
The
Spartans.
Our villain, school instructor Blake Collins (Will Kemp), might as well
be named Dean Wormer for all of his stiff, slightly exaggerated
reactions to everything. Two brothers, of course, are complete
opposites, and the school’s outcastes join forces to show
everyone what they have down deep inside as they fight conformity. They
might as well have t-shirts made up with the slogan, Oddballs Unite!
Plus, do you think they might have to take a little bit of their formal
learning and mix it with a dash of what they learn on the streets to
win the big competition? The acting doesn’t save Step
Up 2
The Streets either.
Evigan might have an attractive midriff, but she sometimes starts to
give a William Shatner-like delivery of lines with odd pauses and
exaggerations. Then, she has the kind of raspy smoker’s voice
you expect a 60-year old with a 2-pack-a-day habit to have. Robert
Hoffman fulfills the role of unthreatening teen girl fantasy with his
appearance, but doesn’t have any dynamic aspect of his screen
presence that will make you remember who he is 10 minutes after walking
out of the Cineplex.
Step Up 2 The Streets should cut
out the story and just show a compilation of the dancing scenes.
Step Up 2 The Streets is rated
PG-13 for language, some suggestive material and brief violence
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