Step Up 3D Loses the Beat
Moose (Adam G. Sevani) and best friend Camille (Alyson Stoner) are excited to be starting school at NYU, especially as they’ll be doing it together, but the call of dancing isn’t one the excitable wannabe electrical engineer seems to be able to shake. Especially after he meets Luke (Rick Malambri), a dance aficionado with his own crew called the Pirates he thinks is one of New York’s best.
The dancing is electric in Step Up 3D © Touchstone Pictures
Quickly they join forces, and with the World Dance Jam and its $100-thousand prize on the way their timing couldn’t have been better. See, Luke needs that money to keep his parents’ prized building from going into foreclosure, and as it is home to a wayward group of unusual dancers as well as a club specializing in nightly dance battles he’d feel just terrible if he let the bank repossess it.
With the help of the mysterious but extremely talented fellow dancer Natalie (Sharni Vinson) he’s positive all will work out. But with Moose and Camille’s relationship faltering as well as Luke’s dangerous rivalry with former friend Julien (Joe Slaughter) threatening the stability of the Pirates things begin to rapidly unravel. Things get even worse when the truth about Natalie comes to light, and it will take faces from the past to join forces with the talents of the future to ensure the World Dance Jam title goes to the most talented crew.
None of the Step Up movies are what I would call deep, the latest Step Up 3D certainly no exception. It is, however, easily the most convoluted, first time screenwriters Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer throwing in a lot of excess for no apparent reason. Instead of one love story this third entry in the series boasts two, adding in the extra weight of collegiate failure and banking foreclosures for even more weight. This movie wants to be the serious one in the trilogy, pumping up the melodramatic volume in hopes audiences will be suitably impressed.
Get real. I watch a Step Up movie for the incredible dancing, not for a Douglas Sirk meets John Hughes crossed with “One Tree Hill” and “Gossip Girl” storyline. I want a love story about a kid from the wrong side of the tracks and a kid from the right, both of whom adore dance, who end up coming together to form a more perfect union and show they can turn the beat around and get jiggy with it like no tomorrow. I don’t need all the rest, don’t require they extra motivations. I want simplicity, because when this series has broken itself down to basics it has proven itself to be guilty pleasure I’m not ashamed to adore.
But Step Up 3D sadly does not now when to say when. I like Moose and I like Camille and I’m happy the both of them are back but I’m not sure I needed an entire subplot revolving completely around their relationship. But as little as I needed that I needed the one concerning Luke, his dreams of becoming a documentary filmmaker and his travails with the bank even less. All this stuff ends up making his relationship with Natalie virtually nonsensical and pointless, the both of them relegated to delivering one another laughable platitudes about dreaming dreams, living life and moving to California. It’s hackneyed, absurd and far often than not unintentionally funny, the preview audience I saw the film with talking back at the screen (and not in a good way) more times than I care to recount.
There is, of course, a saving grace here and that is the dancing. As a series, the dance sequences in Step Up 2: The Streets far surpassed the one from Step Up. That trend continues with this third entry, returning director Jon Chu and choreographer Hi-Hat upping the ante with each and every battle and performance. These moments are all money and they are why the audience has paid the price for admission and on their own they come very close to being worth the price (even the 3D up-charge). These dancers do things that are mind-blowing, and there were times my jaw had dropped so far to the floor I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back off it.
Seriously, though, what’s the point? I can’t really tell people to pay $20 to go see this picture in 3D when it will arguably play just as well, if not better, in 2D and in the comfort of their own home. Of all the films in this series this is easily the silliest (which is saying something, let me tell you) and having to suffer through all the soap opera dramatics in order to watch the eye-popping dance numbers just isn’t worth it. Even as a fan Step Up 3D just doesn’t cut it, and if it had been a contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance” even with its flair and pizzazz I seriously doubt Nigel Lythgoe would have given it a ticket to Vegas.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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