Fight with the Dance, and not Your Overwhelming Socio-economic Advantages

So I capped off Valentine's Day last night by taking my wife to see Step Up 2: The Streets. I did so because she was a dancer and very much wanted to see the film, and not because I think it's the most romantic movie of all time. Obviously The Goonies holds that honor. Oh Sloth...will your forbidden love with Chunk ever again walk boldly in the sun, as it did that fateful day One-Eyed Willie's hidden pirate ship pierced the swells of the might Pacific once more?

I have now had the pleasure of watching both Step Up movies, and it seems that some fundamental details undergird this universe. The female protagonist of this latest iteration, Andie West, is another orphaned white kid who is rebelling through that dangerous, sinister medium known as contemporary dance, going so far as to actually stage choreographed dances on subway cars with her "crew," a heinous act that rightfully receives the media's full ire during the opening minutes of the film. Remember, kids: when you hip-hop dance in public, the terrorists win. Anyway, since the main character of the first movie, Tyler Gage, was also an orphaned white kid in foster care, I finally realized what these films are trying to say: having parents and even a moderately happy childhood denies you the passion to truly dance. No wonder I'm so inept on the dance floor, despite how much "Humpty Dance" might pull my heart strings. Indeed, as everyone knows, Fred Astaire was locked in the basement of an orphange and fed fish heads until he was 27, and let's just say Mikhail Baryshnikov's childhood makes the Saw movies looks like a paternal reprimand on Leave it to Beaver. Poor bastards.

The movie centers around these dancing "crews," who go to work on the dance floor and leave their inhibitions at the...you get the idea. And since the movie is all about choreographed teams of dancers, the actual dancing is much more entertaining this time around. Indeed, I would go so far as to classify this movie as "dance porn," because, much like that more traditional variety of porn we all know and love, this movie has just enough plot and dialogue to limp to the next performance setpiece. And I'm fine with that. If I want snappy dialogue, I'll watch something by Joss Whedon. I'd show you the trailer, but it doesn't do justice to the movie's dancing, mainly because it focuses so much on the film's protagonist. As my wife observed, young Andie is probably the best actress of the bunch and certainly the worst dancer. However, I have attached a mash up of sorts, one focusing (almost) entirely on the dancing alone and not paying undue attention to the film's young punky brewster:



The important thing to remember here, of course, is the movie's message. Follow your heart, give it your all, and even a ragtag crew of extremely priveleged misfits from one of the nation's most prestigious arts schools can take "it" back to the streets and soundly defeat (and embarrass!) the non-white, economically disadvantaged hoods who thought this kind of dancing was their purview alone. Hey, don't hate the choreographer, yo, hate the game. That's just what the Streets is all about.