Movie Monday w/Mimi: Step Up

Let me preface this by saying I want to lay my biases on the table. I am Black woman who and a self described equal opportunity entertainment viewer. I pride myself on not a movie snob: I didn’t turn my nose up at Madea as chitlin’ circuit theater, and I was willing to give Save the Last Dance, and opportunity to save itself, and I still think Booty Call was funny as hell even if Jamie Foxx doesn’t claim it no more. I even watched Christie, despite Hallmark mellow drama.

I believe people go to the movies to be entertained, and I enjoy smart entertainment, like a perfect bahama mama. I draw the line at sloppy drunkenness.

Step Up, however, is irrefutably on the low end of subpar summer flicks. It starts off with a pitchy feel: Its male lead, Tyler (Channing Tatum), is eye candy. An updated Patrick Swayze seething masculinity in Rocawear, Tyler is truly a dancer, and evidentially the lone white boy in chocolate city. A poor foster kid from the wrong side of the Baltimore streets, Tyler spends his days passing time stealing cars with his boy Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and – his impressionable brother Skinny (De’Shawn Washington), his nights dancing and getting into fights.

One night after some youthful mischief Tyler and his buddies break the window to the exclusive Maryland School of The Arts and proceed to destroy – perhaps a way of sticking it to the rich kids in effigy. Nobly, Tyler sacrifices his own freedom for his friends and takes the entire rap for the caper. Tyler’s rebellious streak lands him in front of the court, which sentences him to 200 hours of community service at the school.

There the indifferent Tyler is reminded that his carelessness has caused the school enough to loose some student their scholarship. While doing janitorial work, Tyler soon gets a chance to show his moves to Nora (Jenna Dewan), a struggling ballet student looking for a way to prove to the nation’s top dancing scouts and her disapproving mom that she is conservatory material.

Much like “The Little Mermaid” Tyler longs to be a part of Nora’s world and a permanent replacement for Nora’s boyfriend. Conveniently, Nora’s dance partner has an accident, she dumps her boyfriend, and the rest of the weakling sophomores are unable to provide Nora with what she needs-- a strong virile dance partner that can really, umm, lift her. Now, if only her ruffneck could stop being so unruly!

From here it is a predictable cross between west side story, the traditional dance flick, and after school special, with a few explicatives, guns and a murder sprinkled in for effect. Channing is best when he is in motion, because at least then he isn’t assaulting us with monosyllables and blank stares. The rest of the film is a tug-o-war between Tyler’s aimlessness and Nora’s ambivalence.

The ridiculous subplot between Nora’s chums, Miles (Mario) and Lucy (Drew Sidora) the cheery songstress and the shy deejay, serves to fill the awkward scenes until the dancing begins again.


Although I took aim with Save The Last Dance, for it’s Pollyanna attempt to deal with race, Step Up doesn’t even begin to step up when it comes to risk or complication the surface outside of a subterfuge joke made early in the film. The issue of class and race that are brimming at the surface waiting to be painted are glossed over bevy of diverse MSA students, nobly struggling to keep their scholarships, --although I was never convinced that Tyler truly understood. We know very little about what drives (or doesn’t) Tyler, and the film doesn’t give us a reason to care.

What is left are wasted moments to tell the same old song in a fresh new way.

And of course, my bias is lunged out of my seat when they show the hardworking yet neglectful black mother of Tyler’s friends leaving two juvenile delinquents in charge of watching a younger brother while she works the night shift as a maid. Many mothers I know would have brought the kids with her to work. That would have been a plot twist!

Many of its fans applaud Step Up for the dancing. I’ll admit it gets saucy at some points, but I’ve seen better dancers in my hometown. If dance movies are only about dancing and not about the plot, please spare the attention challenged overscheduled masses of the population, and make a video instead. Until then, stay home, save your nine dollars and catch “Dancing With the Stars”.